Soyer's standard cookery

Take any remains of cold fish, break it into flakes, and moisten with cream, seasoning with a little pepper and salt. Have ready some mashed potatoes and sufficient hard-boiled eggs. Now take a well-buttered mold and fill it alternately with layers of mashed potato, flaked fish, and hard-boiled egg cut into thick slices. Let it steam from twenty to thirty minutes, according to the size of the mold and serve very hot. Fish Stew. Place in a casserole, or shallow earthenware cooking vessel, a sole, fillets of turbot, brill, or almost any other white fish, and add twenty shelled mussels with a little of their liquor, and a few heads of small button mushrooms. When almost cooked drain off the sauce, arrange the mussels and mushrooms round the fish, strain the sauce and thicken it with the yolk of an egg. If there is not sufficient sauce add a little strong clear stock thickened with butter and flour. Replace the cover on the vessel, let it cook for two or three minutes longer, and serve very hot. Another method is to strain off the sauce entirely and replace it with a brown sauce made by adding clear stock butter to a little melted butter thickened with flour. Fish Salad. This is a capital recipe for utilizing odds and ends of fish. Flake two cupfuls of any kind of cold boiled fish and add half a pound of picked and chopped shrimps. Stir in two tablespoonfuls of capers, a little pepper, celery seed, and four tablespoonfuls of vinegar. A little cayenne or a minced green chili may be added if pungency it not disliked. Next, mix with these just enough mayonnaise dressing to make the whole slightly moist, and serve with lettuce leaves. Hard-boiled eggs in slices, beetroot cut in patterns, and scraps of aspic jelly may be used as a garnish. Fish Klosh. Mince an ounce of ham or bacon with a shallot or small onion and fry in an ounce of butter until just cooked. Next stir in an ounce of flour, add a quarter of a pint of milk, and let the whole boil gently for five minutes. Mix this with one egg and half a pound of any cold fish finely flaked, and season with pepper and salt. Spread the mixture on a plate and put it aside. When quite cold mold the mixture into small balls and poach them for five or six minutes in boiling water or fish stock. Serve with anchovy sauce poured over them. Fish Matelote. Slice two pounds of any kind of fresh white fish — it is better to have several kinds mixed — and place in a frying pan with twenty very small white onions and two ounces of butter. Fry until the whole is a golden brown. Next place in a saucepan, or better still, in an earthenware cooking pot, with six sliced mushrooms, an ounce and a half of flour, a sprinkling of pepper and salt, the juice of half a small lemon, and a bunch of herbs. Add half a pint each of clear stock and red wine, and simmer the whole for half an hour. Add more seasoning if required, and serve as hot as possible. This somewhat resembles the famous Bouillabaisse of Southern France. Fried Frogs' Legs.