For a dinner of six.

Puree de grandes-crevettes,

Merlans a l' Americaine.

Cotelettes de mouton an puree d'oseille.

Galantine de chapon an salade.

Sarcelles au cresson.

Celeri au beurre.

Creme d'abricot a la Moscovite.

Fromage, hors d'oeuvres.

Dessert.

1. - Make a strong clear consomme with beef, bone, vegetables and herbs, as usual: when done, strain it into a bowl to be ready when wanted. Pick enough cold boiled prawns to fill a half-pint pot to the brim: pound these in a mortar with a good allowance of butter till you get them to a pulp : flavour this with salt, and a little spiced pepper to taste: now melt an ounce of butter in a sauce-pan, and incorporate therewith a table-spoonful of flour; mix this with the prawn pulp. Next take about the same quantity of bread-crumb well soaked in stock (the consomme) that you have of prawn, and add it to the prawn pulp also, off the fire, mixing the two together by degrees thoroughly, and gradually adding the consomme till you find you have a soup a little less thick than that you want eventually to get. You now set the sauce-pan on the fire, and stir vigorously till it boils, and thickens ; take it off the fire then, and let it get cool, to enable you to remove any fat that may rise, after which the puree should be pressed through a hair sieve into a bowl. When wanted, it must, of course, be re-heated, and served with dice of fried bread. This soup is well worth the little trouble it requires : it is, of course, a relation of the bisque family. A coffee-cupful of boiling cream, or of milk in which the yolk of an egg has been whipped, may be added, but I think the puree is generally rich enough without that assistance.

Prawn puree.

Let my up-country friends follow this recipe, using a tin of lobster, well chained, and washed : their efforts will result in "bisque de homard" In this case the coral of the Lobster gives the soup a rich orange colour. The American canned lobster, prawns, and shrimps, make excellent bisques.

2. - Cut and trim three nice whitings in fillets, brush them over with egg, ami bread-crumb them with some finely sifted white crumbs ; fry them a golden yellow in boiling fat, drain, and serve them with this sauce: - Melt a dessert-spoonful of butter in a small sauce-pan, stir in a dessert-spoonful of flour, add half a pint of warm fish gravy, let it thicken, and finish it with the juice of a lime, a little salt, a pinch of sugar, a few drops of tabasco, and a heaped up dessert-spoonful of chopped capsicums.

3. - Choose a first rate neck of mutton, divide it into the neatest cutlets you can, give them a dust of pepper and salt, and place them en marinade for the rest of the day. For the sauce you want one Bombay onion, two handfuls of sorrel, one lettuce, and two table-spoonfuls of butter. Take a light sauce-pan, melt the butter at the bottom of it; throw into it the onion very finely shredded, toss this about till it turns a pale yellow, and then add Whitings in the the whole of the sorrel and the lettuce also finely cut up. Stir the vegetables about in the melted butter till they begin to change colour, and then pour into the sauce-pan about half a pint of gravy slightly thickened with flour; stir this well, and put in a tea-spoonful of white sugar, three salt-spoonfuls of salt, and a good dusting of black pepper. Let the vegetables boil for about five minutes, then, if you find the sauce too thick, or as cooks say, "stodgy," dilute it with a little more gravy, till it assumes the consistency of a rich puree, ease the fire and let the sorrel simmer for half an hour. At the end of that time it will be ready to accompany your cutlets, which should be drained from their marinade, dipped in melted butter, and grilled over a bright clear fire. Prepare a circle of mashed potato, fill it with the puree burning hot, and arrange the cutlets round the outside of the circle, with bunches of water-cress for garnish.

American way.

Mutton outlets with sorrel sauce.

4. - A really tasty cold dish, garnished with blocks of broken aspic jelly, the whole fresh from the ice-box, and accompanied by a good salad is, to my mind, a worthy piece de resistance for a little dinner party at Madras in the sultry month of May. A galantine too, is a dish that is well adapted for a Neilgherry picnic, the wedding breakfast, the luncheon, or supper, so let us discuss the following recipe: and flatten the carcass before you with a cutlet bat. Make a forcemeat as follows: - five ounces stale bread-crumb, five ounces minced fat bacon, the rind of a lime minced fine, a dessert-spoonful each of thyme and marjoram, some spiced pepper, and salt, a table-spoonful of minced parsley, all bound with four eggs : mix this as previously described, and keep it by your side in a basin. Now turn out the "picnic tongue," straighten it, and cut a solid piece of the best meaty part to form the centre of your galantine: it should be nearly as long as the carcass of the fowl (leaving room for folding up) and nearly the full thickness of the tongue after the skin has been peeled off. Slice up the remainder of the tongue ; separating fat slices from lean, and keep them on a dish handy; scraps may be minced fine, and mixed with the forcemeat. To make the foundation of your work as level as possible, you should trim nearly all the meat of the carcass of the fowl, with a very sharp knife, almost to the skin; the meat that is thus detached should be kept with that of the wings and legs. Lastly, mince together the liver, gizzard and heart, and "spice-pepper," and mince them well.

Choose a very fine fowl, capon, or hen-turkey; purchase one of Crosse and Blackwell's "picnic tongues" (in the round tins) and proceed as follows: - Having cleaned the bird, and having carefully saved the liver, heart, and gizzard, lay it breast downwards on a board, and proceed to bone it (Ramasamy does this generally very cleverly) you may sever the pinions, legs, and neck, but draw the skin carefully over the places, and stew them up, so that the outer skin may be as whole as possible. Cut off all the meat from the pinions and legs (removing the sinew)

Galantine of capon.

First, spread a layer of the stuffing a quarter of an inch thick evenly over the fowl, upon that a layer of your slices of tongue (spice-pepper freely) upon that a layer of the meat you cut from the fowl (dust of salt) over that a second spread of forcemeat, then your minced liver, etc., and lastly, the block of tongue : fold over this the flattened carcass, disturbing the layers as little as possible, and sew the galantine up securely with fine twine. Envelop this in a clean cloth, and tie it up carefully with cross strings to preserve the oval shape of the galantine. Set this in a deep stew-pan, cover it well with weak stock in which a claret-glass of Madeira has been introduced, and simmer gently for three or four hours. When done, lift it out, drain it, take off the cloth, wrap it in a fresh dry one, and place it on a dish with a heavy weight above it. When quite cold, take out your galantine, scrape off any fat that may be attached to the skin, glaze it, and set it in the ice-box, finally serving it garnished with broken lumps of aspic jelly.

A galantine to be correct should, of course, contain a goodly allowance of truffles: these should be first cooked in butter and a little Madeira, and then introduced during the packing of the carcass, according to the artistic skill of the chef, in fairly large pieces; truffle trimmings should be minced fine and added to the forcemeat. Little dice of cornichons are effective if dotted about in the layer of stuffing, and pistachio nuts are an improvement.

5. - Let the teal be sent up most carefully roasted straight from the fire ; garnish each portion with a bunch of water-cress ; and send round butter, limes cut in quarters, and Nepaul pepper.

6. - This is a very simple, yet tasty entremets de legume : especially to be recommended at Madras where Neilgherry celery soon loses its nutty crispness, and is consequently not so nice to eat raw. Trim four heads of fine white celery very neatly, wash them carefully, and when convinced that no earth remains hidden in the leaves, boil them in salt and water, or in milk if you can afford it. When tender, drain, split each piece in half, and serve as hot as possible upon a silver dish like asparagus. Butter plainly melted, as for "Dutch sauce," page 89, should alone accompany the vegetable thus delicately dressed. Please do not spoil it by serving it with a 'conjee' made of flour and milk, called by Ramasamy "white sauce," or with sodden toast beneath it.

Roast teal with water-cress.

Celery with butter.

7. - Now here we have a very recherche sweet dish. The specialite of creams a la Moscovite consists in their being sent to table very cold, - not frozen as an iced pudding, but so long buried in ice as to be almost as cold. The cream is easy enough. Pass a pot of apricot jam through a fine sieve. Boil a pint and a half of milk; mix into it when cool the yolks of ten eggs and make a rich custard. Stir into the custard when cool, an ounce and a half of dissolved gelatine, and then the strained jam. If not sweet enough, you must now add a little sugar. Set the liquid in a mould upon ice, and when you perceive that it is beginning to congeal, add half a pint of whipped cream, and a glass of noyeau. Stir the contents of the mould together, and then bury it in ice for at least two hours. Serve as cold as possible.

Pickled steak, or chops.

Place B steak in a deep dish with a couple of onions sliced, a clove of garlic, pepper corns, salt, some leaves of thyme, and marjoram, a bunch of parsley, and some lime peel. Add oil and vinegar (two table-spoonfuls of former to one of latter) sufficient to soak the meat well without actually covering it. Let it soak all day ; lift it, when wanted, from the marinade, and fry lightly in butter : then (when coloured on both sides nicely) pour in the marinade, with a breakfast-cup of made-gravy, and stew the steak gently till thoroughly done. - Strain the liquor, free it from fat, reduce it a little over the fire, pour over the steak, and serve. This is just as good with a nice mutton steak, or a few juicy chops.

Apricot cream a la Moscovite.