Handbook of practical cookery

OYSTER BALLS—CRAB PIE. SPECIAL DISHES. Oyster Balls. — One dozen oysters, two ounces of veal, two ounces beef suet, one salt-spoonful powdered mace, one quarter tea-spoonful salt, one quarter tea-spoonful pepper, three table-spoonfuls bread crumbs, one egg. Place the oysters and their liquor in a sauce-pan, place the pan over the fire, and just allow the liquor to come to the boiling-point. Strain the oysters from the liquor and chop them very finely. Remove the skin from the suet and chop it very finely. Chop very finely the veal. Place the oysters, veal, and suet in a basin ; add the mace, pepper, and salt. Stir all well with a spoon, drop in the yolk of egg, stir again together. Flour slightly a board, and roll the mixture into small balls, beat up the white of egg on a plate, roll each ball in it. Place on a sheet of paper the bread crumbs, and roll each ball in it. Half fill a sauce-pan with clarified fat, heat it over the fire until the smoke rises. Drop in one by one the balls and cook them for two minutes. Take them out one by one, and drain them for a second on a sheet of kitchen paper. Serve on a hot napkin and garnish with parsley. Crab Pie or Deviled Crabs.— Provide two crabs, three ounces of butter, one ounce of flour, one gill of milk, one gill of cream, one tea-spoonful of anchovy sauce, one tablespoonful of bread crumbs, one salt-spoonful of pepper, one half salt-spoonful of salt. First throw the crabs into boiling water, and boil them for quarter of an hour. Pick the meat then from the shells, taking care not to break the shells, as they are to be used as natural bake-pans for the pie. Cut the meat into irregular pieces, and put them in readiness for use ; then, taking a fresh sauce-pan, melt two ounces of the butter, to which add the flour, milk, and cream, and boil all for two minutes. The sauce-pan must now be taken from the fire, and the anchovy sauce, pepper and salt, and meat from the crabs added. When this is mixed thoroughly together, arrange it smoothly in the shells, sprinkle thickly with the bread crumbs, putting the remaining butter in small pieces on the top of each, and brown in a quick oven. Lobster Cutlets.— Place in readiness one lobster, one and one half ounce of butter, one ounce of flour, one gill of cold water, one table-spoonful of cream, one half tea-spoonful of lemon-juice, one grain of cayenne, one salt-spoonful of salt, one salt-spoonful of pepper, one egg, three table-spoonfuls of bread crumbs. The lobster should be put into boiling water for twenty minutes ; after which the head must be twisted off, and the coral that runs down the back removed. Beat this coral with half an ounce of butter together in a mortar ; and to make it perfectly smooth rub it through a wire sieve. Now melt in a sauce-pan the remainder of the butter, add thereto the flour and cold water, stir all until the water boil, and then allow it to boil two minutes.