This method of employing the fish called pike or jack is unique. My grandfather was the inventor of this method, which is specially good for people suffering from dyspepsia, or delicate digestions.

Method. - Half a pound of pike flesh free of bone and skin. Place in a mortar with one and a half ounces of salt, a tea-spoonful of white pepper, a good pinch of cayenne, half a small nutmeg, grated, one ounce of butter. Pound together for half an hour. Now introduce half a pound of panades. Pass through a hair sieve, or very fine wire sieve. Place all in a clear mortar and pound for five minutes.

Previous to this, prepare one and a half pounds of beef suet chopped fine without adding flour, and melt it in a double saucepan or bain marie, by quietly simmering (not boiling), taking care that no water touches it. Strain through muslin into a large bowl; when nearly cold whisk continuously until it is foamy like a beaten egg. Introduce this in three portions, one at a time, into the mortar mentioned above. Do this quickly, each time breaking in the whole of a raw egg, until the whole is perfectly smooth.

As a means for securing a diversity and improvement a little chopped parsley, truffles, or mushrooms, according to taste can be introduced at this stage.

Sprinkle a board heavily with flour and pour contents of the mortar on to this. Now roll flour and mixture into the size and shape of small sausages.

Have ready a large stewpan with one gallon of boiling water, into which a good handful of salt has been thrown, and drop into this the quenelles, a dozen at a time. The quenelles will at first sink to the bottom; when they rise leave them one minute without boiling. Remove from the water with a fish-slice, strain on a napkin, and place on a dish. In this way they will keep for two or three days.

Method Of Serving The Above

Vol Au Vent Soyer

Have one pint of brown sauce in a stewpan large enough to hold three quarts, add a few sliced mushrooms, a few slices of braised sweetbread or a few shrimps, or crayfish, or lobster, together with the juice of half a lemon, and bring to the boil. Add two tablespoonfuls of Madeira or sherry. If the sauce is too thin thicken it with a little arrowroot, so as to obtain a glossy sauce. Season to taste.

Put half a dozen quenelles into the sauce and leave at the side of the stove to keep warm, but not to boil. Have your Vol au Vent or crouttes on a very hot entree-dish and one minute only before serving put the sauce containing the quenelles on a full fire with the cover on, when the quenelles will swell in diameter to the size of a golf-ball. Pour at once in the croutte on dish, as the quality and success depend on quick serving. See that hot plates are on the table waiting for the dish to appear. This is most important.

When using white sauce proceed in the same way as above. Dilute white sauce with boiling milk or white fish stock. If no fish stock, other white stock will do.

The above entails a lot of work, but it is well worth doing, and having been once done comes easily afterwards. In Lent and other times of fasting, by omitting stock, etc., and using only fish, this is very nourishing and good and acceptable to a rigid Catholic.

The recipe given is for pike quenelles only, but any kind of fish can be used and is much superior to any other known method.