Dinners and Luncheons - Paul Pierce (best novels for beginners .txt) 📗

Blue Points, Brownbread Sandwiches, Cream of Tomato, Wafers, Olives, Celery, Salted Almonds, Timbales of Halibut, Bechamel Sauce, Sweetbread and Mushroom Patties, Green Peas, Roast Turkey, Chestnut Stuffing, Potato Balls, Parker House Rolls, Tutti Frutti in Apple Cups, Asparagus, Melted Butter, Maraschino Punch, Quail on Toast, Rice Croquettes, Current Jelly, Tomato Jelly Cups filled with Celery and Nut Salad, Fruit, Nuts, Bon Bons, Almond Cake, Vanilla Ice Cream, Claret Sauce, Crackers, Cheese, Café Noir, Creme de Menthe.

The sardine canapés, given as a first course in Menu I, is a dainty appetizer made of sardines, boned, rubbed to a paste with a little creamed butter and seasoned to taste with Worcestershire and a few grains of cayenne. Spread small thin rounds of toast with the mixture, cover with white of hard boiled egg rubbed through a sieve and place an olive in the center of each. Cream soups are considered especially dainty. The deviled crabs are easily prepared. Pick the meat from the shells, mix with a cream sauce and season highly with mustard, cayenne and lemon juice. Wash and trim the shells, fill rounding with the mixture, cover with buttered crumbs and bake until brown. Parboil the sweetbreads, split and cut in pieces about the size of a large oyster. Egg and bread crumb them, fry, arrange on nests of boiled macaroni and pour the tomato sauce over them. Serve the cheese ramakins, which is cheese souffle baked in ramequin dishes, with this course.

The chocolate loaf is made of a sponge cake, hollowed out, covered inside and out with a plain chocolate icing. Fill shortly before serving with cream, whipped, sweetened and flavored, and serve very cold.

The first course in Menu II, is oyster cocktails, which are now in high favor. Serve either in sherry glasses, lemon, orange or grapefruit shells. Choose small, firm oysters of fine flavor and allow six to a person. Cover with a sauce made of a tablespoon of lemon juice, a teaspoon each of vinegar and catsup, a fourth of a teaspoon of Worcestershire, an eighth of a teaspoon of grated horseradish, two drops Tobasco sauce and a few grains of salt. The Potage á la Reine is easily made and very excellent. Mash fine the yolks of three hard boiled eggs and mix with them a half a cup of bread crumbs, soaked until soft, in half a cup of rich milk. Stir into this gradually the cooked breast of a chicken chopped fine as meal and a pint of hot cream. Boil two minutes, then add a quart of clear chicken broth, salt, pepper and celery salt to season. To prepare the following course mix some flaked fish with a rich cream sauce, fill into scallop shells, cover with buttered crumbs and bake. Serve with the fillet of beef as a single course the mushrooms, rolls, potatoes and asparagus. The hot rolls given throughout the menus are made with yeast according to any favorite rule, the different names only indicating a difference in shape. Orange frappe is simply an orange water ice frozen to a mush and served in frappe glasses. The rules for croquettes and salad are too familiar to need special repetition. Add some chopped almonds to the usual recipe for meringues and bake in a slow oven. When done, press in the bottoms. Fill with the parfait before serving. To make the parfait, beat the yolks of four eggs until light, add three-quarters of a cup of maple syrup and cook over hot water until it thickens. Beat until cold, then stir into a pint of cream whipped until stiff. Fill into a mould and let stand about four hours well packed in ice and salt.

A favorite first course in season is blue points on the half shell, as given in Menu III. Allow six to a person, and arrange in a circle on a bed of cracked ice with a quarter of lemon in the center of the plate. Cut the bread for sandwiches very thin, butter it, place two pieces together and stamp in rounds. Serve the cream of tomato in bouillon cups with a spoonful of whipped cream floating on the surface. To make the Timbales, cook a pound of fresh halibut in boiling salted water, drain and force through a fine meat chopper. Add to this pulp three-quarters of a teaspoon of salt, a few grains of cayenne, a third of a cup of cream whipped until stiff, and the stiffly beaten whites of three eggs. Fill small, buttered timbale moulds with the mixture, half surround with hot water and bake twenty minutes in a moderate oven. Serve with a white sauce, to which add the beaten yolks of eggs and, if liked, a little minced parsley and lemon juice. Instead of serving the usual cranberry sauce with the turkey, scoop out the inner pulp of some small red apples and fill them with a mixture made, during the summer, of the various fruits in season, almost their weight in sugar and preserved. Maraschino punch is simply a strong lemon ice as a foundation, flavored highly with maraschino. Serve in punch glasses with a maraschino cherry in the center of each. Make some tomato jelly with gelatine and mould it in small cups. Unmould on shredded lettuce, hollow out each one and fill with a mixture of diced celery, chopped English walnuts and rich mayonnaise. The almond cake is made of the plain white cake foundation, baked in two layers. Spread thickly between the layers and on top of the cake an abundance of boiled icing made very rich with a quantity of blanched almonds chopped very fine. Serve with each portion of plain vanilla ice cream a spoonful or more of sauce made of a cup of sugar and half a cup of water boiled to a thick syrup, and to which is added, when cool, four tablespoons of claret. Chill on ice.

The Ease of a Course Dinner.

Many of our housewives who want the elegance of a course dinner, yet who are limited to the services of one maid, would be much amazed at the ease with which they can both cook and serve if a little forethought be used in the menu.

Cocktail.—A preliminary cocktail, prepared beforehand from a bottled sauce or catsup and marinated oysters or clams, makes a good beginning and can be made ready in the early morning and placed on ice to great advantage.

Soup.—A clear soup with vermicelli or noodles can be cooked the day before and may simmer quietly for half an hour before serving time without further care.

Fish.—Fish is well represented by deviled crabs, seasoned and turned into little mounds in the center of cockle shells. This may be done any time several hours previous to the feast and all they need at meal time is a simple browning in the oven.

Meat.—Large and substantial roasts are not only hard to prepare and serve but also fill the oven to the exclusion of everything else, so why not have delicious little steaks, fillet of beef, with canned French peas, and pomme de terre au gratin, served in ramekins and prepared early in the day from mashed potato and a sprinkling of grated cheese.

Salad.—Most salads may, without serious injury, be mixed several hours before using and placed in a large bowl in the refrigerator, placing it on the lettuce leaves at serving time. Cheese balls are better made early and iced.

Dessert.—Certainly for dessert nothing could be more delicious, more appetizing or more decorative than individual Charlotte Russe, more popular than ice cream with hot maple or chocolate sauce and stuffed wafers, or more soul satisfying than a tutti frutti French cream, all of which may be either ordered from the caterer or made at home early.

With bonbons, coffee, cigars and liqueurs (if used) this provides for a really elaborate dinner of eight courses, which could be prepared for that matter by the housewife herself in the forenoon, inasmuch as the only thing which must be actually cooked at mealtime is the steak. Almost any maid could be trusted to do the rest.

A Fine Menu.