Mrs. Roundell's Practical cookery book

Cutlets of Cooked Salmon.— Take the same quantities as in the last recipe, and proceed in the same way. When the cream has been added to the Salmon and eggs well beaten together, butter a dozen cutlet moulds, fill them with the mixture, tapping them on the table to make it fill the moulds properly, and smoothing the surfaces with a palette-knife dipped in hot water. Lay the cutlets in a wide saute-pan or baking-dish upon a sheet of white paper folded in four, pour hot water about an inch deep, set it on the fire, let it just boil, and then at once reduce to very gentle simmering, keeping the lid of the pan on. The cutlets will be poached in about thirty-five minutes. Have ready on a dish a mound of mashed potato well sloped outwards. Turn out the cutlets, arrange them round the mound after masking them with sauce verte. For this, thicken half a pint of fish broth, colour it a pale green with spinach colouring, reduce till it coats the spoon well, and finish with a little minced chervil, parsley, and tarragon, and a squeeze of lemon-juice. Bunches of watercress may be arranged in the dish. Or, when the salmon cutlets are in the pan, add boiling water round them to a little less than half their depth, push CUTLETS OF COOKED SALMON the pan into the oven, and simmer them gently till cooked firmly. Let them get cold. Turn them out of their moulds upon a flat dish set over ice, mask them with white chaud-froid glaze (coloured pink with lobster coral if liked) ; when the glaze has set, trim off any glaze which has run over the edges of the cutlets, and dish them in a circle. Fill the centre with a lettuce salad, and garnish with hard-boiled eggs, broken aspic jelly, and moulds of tomato puree, or boutons rouges. (See Tomatoes.) CHAPTER IV. A well-considered and well-made Sauce will give a character of its own to any dish, and two or three of such Sauces will raise the quality of a dinner. Sauces can be good and distinct in flavour without being elaborate, and without expensive adjuncts. But to succeed in making Sauces it is absolutely essential that the materials should be of the best, that directions should he carefully followed, and that the quantities, and the time required for using them, should he exactly measured. Sauces should be made on the gas-stove, as the heat must he carefully regulated. Sometimes a good Are is needed, at others the flame must he reduced to a mere flicker. Many Sauces can he made some hours before they are wanted — perhaps even the day before. They are warmed in the bain-marie when required. One important point to remember is that in adding eggs to a Sauce it must be done off: the fire, or the Sauce will curdle. Another point, equally important, is in thickening the Sauce to add the Sauce to the thickening and not to stir the thickening into the Sauce. The usual allowance for a roux is an ounce of butter and an ounce of flour to a pint of broth. Cream makes Sauces too rich, and should not be used except in one or two cases, snch as for Bread Sauce and Bechamel Sauce. Instead of using cream it is much better to beat up the yolk of a raw egg in a tablespoonful of the Sauce put into a cup, and to stir it into the Sauce, off the fire, just before serving. Many cooks make far too much Sauce ; half a pint is generally enough for four people, sometimes for six.