A year's cookery

Supper. — Chicken or Grouse Salad. — Cut the grouse into neat joints. Boil three or four eggs hard, and provide materials for a salad (whatever may be in season), mayonnaise sauce, and one or two pickled gherkins. Prepare the salad, and dry it thoroughly (March 13th), but do not dish it till a few minutes before it is to be served. Put a little of the shred salad on a dish, and toss it in a spoonful or two of the mayonnaise. Pile the inferior joints of the game on this, add more salad, and repeat until the ingredients are used. Pour mayonnaise over all, and garnish the salad with hard-boiled eggs cut into quarters, and gherkins cut into thin slices, or anchovies filleted. If chervil or tarragon is to be had, a little may be chopped and thrown over the thick sauce at the last moment, or, if preferred, a spoonful of tarragon vinegar can be used in making the mayonnaise. Chicken Salad is made exactly in the same way. Chicken salad is exceedingly good made with celery instead of lettuce, or with a mixture of the two. Strawberry Cream (August 29th). Things that must not be Forgotten. 1. If it is preferred that the grouse should be roasted and served hot, proceed as follows. Roast Grouse. — Let the birds hang as long as possible. Pluck them, and handle them very lightly in doing so, draw them, and wipe them inside and out with a damp cloth, but do not wash them. Truss them firmly, put them down to a sharp clear fire, and baste them liberally all the time! Soak a slice of toast in the dripping-tin and serve them on this. Send brown gravy (October 18th) and bread sauce (October 18th) to table with them They will take about half an hour to roast. 2. Pickle any remains of salmon there may be (May 30th). 3. Preserve the bones and remains of chicken or grouse for making soup. 4. Mayonnaise Sauce. — Take a round-bottomed bowl, not over large, put into it the yolk of an egg and beat it for two or three minutes, then drop pure salad oil into it, one drop at a time, and beat the sauce well between every addition till the sauce is thick and dark, and looks something like beeswax. Now putin a few drops of vinegar, then oil again, until as much sauce is made as is required. Stir in more vinegar, a little at a time, to make the sauce taste pleasantly, and add salt, pepper, and a very small pinch of sugar. The sauce when finished, should be a firm creamy substance. A very good sauce may be made with the yolk of one egg, a quarter of a pint of oil, and two table-spoonfuls of vinegar, but if this quantity would not be sufficient, a pint of oil with vinegar in proportion might be put with one egg. A few drops of lemon-juice would help to make it look creamy, and a little tarragon vinegar would improve the taste. It may be noted that mayonnaise sauce will keep for a long time if it is put into a bottle, closely corked, and kept in a cool place. The secret of making mayonnaise sauce is to put in the oil in drops only at the beginning, beating well between every addition till the mixture becomes thick, and also to beat the sauce one way. If it were stirred first one way and then another, it would curdle. It should be mixed in a cool place, and the oil should be cold, otherwise the sauce would not thicken.