Iced pudding with strawberries.

For a party of eight.

Consomme de poisson.

Filets de pomfret a la poulette.

Croquettes de canard a la bordelaise.

Cotelettes de mouton au creme de fromage.

Chapon au chou-fleur.

Creme de topinambours.

Gelee de marasquin aux fruits.

Charlotte a la Sicilienne.

Fromage, hors d'oeuvres.

Dessert.

1. - This is a clear soup flavoured with fish. A crab for instance answers the purpose admirably, but any fish will do. Let us take the crab. Make ordinary clear consomme for the number you expect. One large crab or two small ones will suffice for eight basins. Boil the crab : drain and clean it: pick out the flesh, saving that of the claws for garnishing. Pound the rest of the meat and shells in a mortar, put the whole of it into the consomme you have made, with a little bag containing a quarter ounce of dried basil, and boil gently for half an hour, strain through a fine sieve, or tamis cloth, - it should now be bright and clear, - heat it up again, and pour it into your soup tureen over some little quenelles made of the claw meat you saved

Clear fish soup.

A table-spoonful of Madeira and the juice of half a lime, constitute the finishing touches of this soup.

2. - Divide one large, or two small promfrets into fillets as neatly as you can, season them on one side with a very little finely minced (cooked) onion, parsley, and the trimmings of the mushrooms you are about to use for the sauce. Roll them up enveloping the seasoning within each fillet. Now set them to simmer gently till done, in a court bouillon, or broth made from their own bones and trimmings, assisted by a breakfast-cupful of stock, a spoonful of chablis and a spoonful of vinegar. Lift them out when done, strain off the broth, thicken it as carefully as you can in the bain-marie with a little flour, and butter, and the strained yolks of four eggs, add a dozen button mushrooms cut into quarters, a little white pepper and salt, and as you take it off the fire, stir in a table-spoonful of cream. Pour this over your fillets which have, of course, been kept hot in the bain-marie whilst the sauce was being made.

3. - These are croquettes made of duck and are exceedingly nice. Roast the bird lightly, let it get cold, then cut off all the meat from the bones, saving every atom of skin, bone, liver, etc. Put the meat away for awhile, giving it a good dusting with black pepper and salt.

Now for the sauce: - Mince an onion, and one clove of garlic (a sine qua non) and stir the mince into a table-spoonful of melted butter at the bottom of a small saucepan, let it fry a pale brown, now throw in all your fragments of duck, having mashed the bones in a mortar, a breakfast-cupful of strong gravy, the rind of a lime; a dozen pepper corns, a pinch of sugar, and salt to taste : add water enough to cover the bones well, and let the contents of the sauce-pan simmer, skimming off the scum that rises. In half an hour you will have a well-flavoured broth. When quite satisfied with the broth, strain it off, let it cool, skim it, and thicken it plainly with flour and butter. Place the sauce-pan in the bain-marie-pan, and let it keep hot there. Now take a tumblerful of sauterne, put it into a small sauce-pan with a table-spoonful of minced onion, a salt-spoonful of black pepper, and a pinch of salt. Boil till the liquid has been reduced to half its original quantity. Then strain it into the previously made sauce. Give the whole a simmer for ten minutes and serve.

Pomfret fillets with Poulette sauce.

Duck croquettes with Bordelaise sauce.

In this instance we make our gravy or foundation of the sauce with the duck bones, etc., for the sake of economy. The basis of true Bordelaise is Espagnole.

In making the croquettes of the duck meat you saved, use some minced bacon, lean and fat in equal shares, one tea-spoonful to each croquette, the bird's liver, any truffle or mushroom parings there may be to spare, and put one olive farcie whole in the centre of each : season the pounded meat with pepper and salt, do not use any spice, but dry some sage leaves in the oven, and make a powder of them, giving about half a salt-spoonful of the powder to each croquette. Bind the croquettes with egg, form them into egg-shaped balls, bread-crumb them in the usual way, and fry them a pale golden yellow in abundance of fat. Dish them round a ring of mashed potato, filling the centre with a pyramid of petits pois verts, and sending round the Bordelaise sauce, piping hot, in a boat.

4. - A nice dish of neck cutlets trimmed neatly and grilled over a very fast fire. Each cutlet ought to be dipped into melted butter, or brushed over with salad oil before it is placed on the grid-iron. The sauce should be made thus: - Parboil two, or three, fair sized Bombay onions, cut them up roughly and put them into a saucepan with a ladleful of butter, a pinch of sugar, and pepper and salt to fancy; let them cook slowly so that they do not take colour, add a table-spoonful of boiled rice, or pearl barley, and a cupful of broth and let the simmering go on till the lumps of onion are quite soft; then add a heaped up table-spoonful of finely grated cheese, stir this in well for a minute or two, then lift it up, and work the mixture through the sieve as you would a puree. Heat it up gently in the bain-marie, and at the last stir in a table-spoonful of rich cream. Serve the cutlets round a wall of 'savoury rice' and fill in the centre with French beans d la maitre d'hotel. Let the sauce go round in a boat with the entree : it ought to be a thick creamy-looking sauce of the consistency of tartare.

Mutton cutlets with cheese sauce.

5. - Lard your capon, roast him with the utmost care, basting with melted butter; let a Bombay onion be put inside the carcass, and sew up the vent; be particular with your stuffing; and let a curl of crisply fried streaky bacon accompany each plate. The bread sauce must be carefully composed, and the cauliflower and potatoes freshly turned out, that is to say, not ruined by being hawked about with your entrees.

6. - For this excellent entremets de legume, see page 149, - As you have already used creme de fromage in this menu, serve the mould (if hot) with a garnish of tomato puree, (q. v. page 242.) if cold, with pure cream, iced.

7. - Put two ounces of gelatine in an enamelled stew-pan with three quarters of a pound of sugar, beat three whites of eggs, moisten them with one quart of water and the juice of one lime; pour the whole into the stew-pan containing the gelatine, and put it on the fire, whisking the liquid continually until it boils. Take the pan from the fire, let the liquid cool, and strain it through a jelly bag, pouring it back and straining again until it is quite clear. When cold, flavour the jelly with maraschino, a wine-glass will be sufficient, and let it rest awhile. Now prepare a macedoine of fruits, preserved cherries, strawberries, apricots, greengages, and raspberries, and fill the jelly mould as follows: - first set it upon ice, and pour into it about one-eighth thickness of the jelly, arrange some fruit tastefully in this layer, cover it with jelly, and continue layers of fruit and of jelly until the mould is nearly full, then finish it with jelly only, cover the mould with ice, and turn it out when finally set and quite firm. Iced cream en bloc may accompany.

Capon with cauliflower.

Mould of Jerusalem artichokes.

Jelly with fruit.

8. - This is an iced pudding flavoured with chocolate.

First note the way in which the case should be made, which is applicable to all iced puddings in cake cases. Cut the slices of cake the length of the depth of the mould, the eighth of an inch thick, and an inch and a half wide : cut a circular piece the size of the bottom of the mould. Make a cement with the whites of three eggs, and an ounce of finely sifted sugar. Arrange the slices round the side of the mould slightly overlapping one another, and cement them firmly together, fixing their ends to the circular top placed at the bottom of the mould. When the cement dries, the case will be quite firm. Choose a mould for the ice slightly smaller than this case, so that the latter may cover it nicely. When firmly set, the cake case may be turned out upon a dish, and its outside brushed over with some thin cement, and sprinkled over with chopped pistachio nuts, almonds, sugar plums (non pareils) or crystallized sugar.

Iced Charlotte a la Sicilienne.

For the ice : - Dissolve two ounces of chocolate in a pint of boiling milk, when quite smooth, and cold, add half a pint of cream, a tea-spoonful of vanilla essence and the yolks of ten eggs : make a custard of the mixture adding two ounces of sugar. Stir in half an ounce of dissolved gelatine while the custard is warm, and whip it briskly and put it into the freezer. Freeze, mixing into the half-frozen custard a coffee-cupful of whipped cream. Turn it out when ready, cover with the case, and serve.

Note. - To adapt this menu, you need only insert after the fish, Boeuf a la mode, vide page 123