A guide to modern cookery

They may then be cooked in a very light Blanc (No. 167). The kidneys are merely soaked in cold water for a few hours, and put to cook with the combs a few minutes before the latter are ready. Cocks’ combs and kidneys are mostly used as garnish; nevertheless, they also serve in the preparation of special dishes, for which I shall now give a few recipes. 1662—CRETES ET ROGNONS DE COQ ALA GRECQUE About twenty-five minutes before serving, prepare a pint of pilaff rice, combined with one half-capsicum cut into dice, and a very little saffron. Also prepare ten roundels of egg-plant, seasoned, dredged, and fried in oil just before dishing. The moment the rice is cooked, add thereto twenty-four very fresh cocks’ kidneys, frizzled in butter, and twelve fine blanched cocks’ combs, poéled after the manner of lambs’ sweetbreads. Set the whole in a silver saucepan, arrange the egg-plant roundels in a circle on the rice, and serve instantly. 1663--DESIRS DE MASCOTTE Put three oz. of butter in a vegetable-pan, and fry it nutbrown. Add to this butter twenty-four fine cocks’ kidneys (it is essential that these should be fresh); season them with salt, pepper, and a little red pepper, and cook them for from five to six minutes, which shouid prove sufficient. Meanwhile, prepare twelve croiitons of bread-crumbs, onethird inch thick, stamped out with a round cutter two-thirds inch in diameter. Fry these croitons in butter at the last minute. Put four fine, very black truffles, cut into somewhat thick slices, into the required quantity of reduced half-glaze sauce; add the kidneys, drained of their butter, as well as the fried crusts, one and one-half oz. of very best butter, and a few drops of lemon juice, and roll the saucepan gently, that the butter may thoroughly combine with the sauce. Dish immediately in a very hot, silver timbale, and serve instantly. 1664—ROGNONS DE COQ FARCIS POUR ENTREES FROIDES, GARNITURES, ETC. Choose some fine, cooked kidneys, and cut them into two lengthwise. Trim them slightly underneath, that they may lie steady. Stuff them by means of a piping-bag with a highly seasoned purée of foie gras, or of ham, of the white of a chicken and truffles, combined with an equal weight of fresh butter. Coat them with a pink or white chaud-froid sauce, according to the requirements; set them in a low timbale, and cover them with light jelly. They may also be put into petits-fours moulds, surrounded with jelly, and used as a garnish for cold fowls. 1664a—CHICKEN CROQUETTES AND CUTLETS The croquettes and cutlets with which we are now concerned are made up of exactly the same constituents, and only differ in the matter of shape, the croquettes, as a rule, being shaped either like corks or rectangles; sometimes, too, like quoits; whereas the cutlets, as their name implies, are made in cutletshaped moulds. The preparation from which they are made is as follows :— One Ib. of the meat of a poached or roast fowl, thoroughly cleared of all skin, cartilage, and bones, and cut into small regular dice’; six oz. of cooked mushrooms; an equal amount of salted ox-tongue or York ham, and four oz. of truffles. Cut 1 When prepared as directed above, all meats, whether of poultry, game, fish, crustacea or mollusca, &c., may serve in the preparation of croquettes or cutlets. these various products like the chicken, and mix them therewith; then add one-half pint of very reduced and finished Allemande sauce to the whole; set the preparation to dry for a few minutes over an open fire; this done, remove it from the latter, and thicken it with the yolks of four raw eggs, which should be quickly mixed with it. Now pour the preparation into a very clean, buttered tray, and butter its surface, lest a crust form thereon during the cooling.