For a party of eight.

Consomme aux points d'asperges.

Filets de pomfret sauce aux capres.

Chaud-froid de volaille a la Palestine.

Cotelettes de mouton a la Valois.

Dinde braisee a la jardiniere.

Salmis de cailles.

Aubergines a 1' Espagnole.

Gelee de Bordeaux.

Parfait au chocolat.

Fromage, liors d'ceuvres.

Dessert.

1. - Prepare a clear, well-flavoured consomme for eight.

Take a small tin of asparagus, open it, and turn the pieces out upon a dish, draining from them all the liquor of the tin. Choose American asparagus if you can, because it is so much greener than either the French or English. When drained, cut the tender ends of the asparagus into pieces half an inch long using a dessert-knife. Put them away carefully, and throw the tough ends into the consomme. When strained, and ready to serve, add to the soup the chopped green points, heat it up to concert pitch, and serve.

Clear soup with asparagus tops.

2. - Fillet the pomfret, and make a fish gravy with the bones and trimmings, flavoured with an onion and a little celery : simmer your fillets, nicely rolled in little curls, in this gravy; drain them, and dish them on a hot dish. For the sauce, make a sauce blonde with butter, and flour, moistened with the liquor from the fish; when smooth, add a dessert-spoonful of finely minced capers, and off the fire, just as you serve, the yolks of two eggs, well mixed with some melted butter. Pour the sauce over the fillets. A few drops of any aromatic vinegar will improve this sauce.

3. - Cover the breasts of two good-sized chickens with paper, and roast them without letting them take colour : when cold, remove the breast meat as neatly as you can, also the flesh of the thighs and drumsticks. Out of the pieces thus obtained, trim a number of neat fillets as nearly the same size as possible, dredge a little flour over them and cover them up.

For chicken chaud-froid sauce: - Take all the bones left after the above operation, skin, necks, pinions, etc, and make a strong chicken broth with them, adding an onion, some celery, a carrot, a bunch of parsley, a few almonds, pepper, and salt, to flavour it well. When the broth is ready, strain it into a bowl, skim it, and proceed to make with it a rich veloute sauce, using for a pint of broth an ounce of butter and one of flour: strain it and let it get cold, and then add to its thickness by stirring into it one-third of its quantity of liquefied aspic, or plain strong meat jelly, and reducing it over the fire till it coats the spoon. Now take it from the fire, and add the yolks of three eggs, and (if available) a table-spoonful of thick cream. Pour some of this over the pieces of chicken completely coating each piece, as it were, with a thick white glaze. Put them away so that the glaze may cool and set. Prepare a border of creme de topinambours (page 149) decorating the top of the mould with carrots and green peas: after steaming it, let the mould get cold, and then set it in ice. When quite cold, turn it out carefully upon a cold silver dish, fill the hollow in the centre with the pieces of glazed chicken, introducing a slice of truffle here and there as you arrange them, and garnishing the top of the chicken with cold boiled cock's comb, and truffles : let the dish remain in the ice-box until the time arrives for it to go to table.

Pomfret fillets with caper sauce.

Chicken chand-froid Palestine fashion.

4. - The cutlets in this dish should be most delicately grilled, and served round a socle of potato mashed a la "G. C." (page 131) the chief feature of the plat being the sauce.

Boil a large sweet onion, cut up into dice, in a coffee-cupful of vinegar: let it boil till the vinegar is entirely reduced; let the onion get cold, then pound it and mix into it an ounce of butter, and the yolks of five eggs. Stir this over a low fire for a couple of minutes only. Take it off, add another ounce of butter, mix it well, and re-place the sauce-pan on the fire, adding half a pint of chicken glaze (that left from No. 3 will do), and another ounce of butter; mix thoroughly, adding finally a table-spoonful of chopped curled parsley; pour this into the centre of your ring of cutlets, and serve. This sauce should be made early, and kept hot en bain-marie, for the moment the cutlets are cooked, they must be sent up, and the sauce will spoil if allowed to get cold.

5. - Braise a hen turkey in gravy, and a little white wine, with a couple of onions, a carrot, a young turnip, a handful of French beans, a breakfast-cupful of peas and a head of celery; when done, dish the turkey: strain the gravy, thicken it, and cut up the vegetables into dice; add them to the gravy again, heat this in a sauce-pan quickly, and pour it over the bird. Serve with potatoes a la Duchesse and a cauliflower.

Mutton cutlets with. Valois sauce.

Hen turkey braised with vegetables.

6. - Choose eight nice quails, clean the birds carefully, put a roll of boiled bacon inside each bird and sew up their vents. Truss the birds as for roasting. Melt some butter in a frying-pan, and give the quails a turn or two therein till they colour nicely. Next put them in a stew-pan, cover them with a rich gravy, and stew them till they are done. Lift them out, thicken the gravy with butter and flour, colour it with caramel, add half a glass of Madeira, the livers of the birds pounded, a teaspoonful of red currant jelly, a dash of chilli vinegar, and some finely minced mushrooms; heat the quails up in this sauce, and serve as hot as possible, dry toast accompanying.

7. - Parboil eight very young brinjals, the size of a small hen's egg, cut them in halves lengthways, pick out the seeds with the point of a vegetable-knife, butter them, and dredge over the surface of each a layer of grated mild cheese ; now arrange them neatly on a silver dish, well buttered, or any dish that will stand the oven, and bake for ten minutes; pour round them a cupful of well made thick brown gravy, and serve in the dish in which they were cooked, placed on a napkin.

8. - The ingredients for this delicious jelly are: - A bottle of sound claret, six ounces of white sugar, a glass of brandy, the rind of one well-washed lime, and the juice of three; one tea-cupful of raspberry syrup or half a pound of raspberry jam. Boil all together, add an ounce of isinglass, and strain through muslin. Decorate a jelly mould with crystallized cherries, set it upon ice, pour some of the liquid jelly into the mould, and set the cherries; after that, gradually add the liquid till the mould is completed. Thoroughly consolidate the jelly in ice, and serve with iced cream.

Salmis of quails.

Brinjals with brown sauce.

Claret jelly.

9. - Make a pint and a half of strong chocolate, using boiling milk, and two ounces of the best chocolate; sweeten it to taste, and let it get cool. Now take an enamelled-pan and break into it the yolks of ten eggs, strain the made chocolate, and add it to the eggs, stirring continually over a low fire, or in the bain-marie until the custard thickens satisfactorily. Mix half an ounce of dissolved gelatine into the custard, strain, and whip it well while warm and let it get cold. Set a mould in the ice-pail, and when the custard has cooled nicely, pour it into the mould, freeze in the usual way, using the spatula frequently, when the custard seems nearly frozen, add a wine-glass of very cold syrup flavoured with vanilla, continue the working, and then pour in a pint of well-whipped cream. Finish the freezing thoroughly, close the mould securely, and bury it in ice for a couple of hours. Then turn the par fait out on a napkin, and serve.

If you are fortunate enough to be able to use cream instead of milk for the making of the chocolate in the first instance, the parfait will be all the nicer.

Note. - To adapt this menu, serve the hen turkey after the fish, and let the quails be roasted and sent round with the usual accompaniments.

Pavfait of chocolate.