Soyer's standard cookery

Place two skinned whiting in a buttered bag. Place half-adozen bearded oysters between them, and add half-a-dozen sliced mushrooms. Mix two ounces of butter with a large teaspoonful of flour, add a few shelled shrimps and a little anchovy paste. Place on the whiting. Pour in two tablespoonfuls of white wine. Seal up in bag and cook for fifteen minutes (350° Fahr.). After placing the whiting on a dish, squeeze a little lemon juice over them. NOTE. — Clean the mushrooms first with a bit of flannel and a little salt. Whiting Fines Herbes. Take two whiting (four pound size), get the fishmonger to bone them. Fill the cavity with half a teaspoonful of mixed finely minced chives or shallot and parsley, season to taste with salt and pepper and a tiny squeeze of lemon juice. Put into a well-greased bag, and bake for fifteen minutes in 300° Fahr. Then dish up a very hot dish, pour the liquor from the fish into the center of each, and serve at once. Haddock and fresh herrings are also excellent when cooked in this way. Trout a la Soyer. Take a nice trout from half a pound to two pounds in weight. Clean and trim well. Then cut on each side about eight or ten incisions. Season well with salt and pepper, according to taste. Take two ounces of butter, half a teaspoonful of anchovy paste or sauce. Rub half a shallot on a cold plate and throw the shallot away. Mix a teaspoonful of flour with the butter on the plate you have rubbed with shallot. Add a large teaspoonful of capers (if at hand). Place your trout in a wellbuttered paper-bag with all the ingredients. Have ready half a cucumber blanched in boiling water for six minutes and cut up in small dice. Also two medium-sized carrots cooked in boiling water, salt, and a little sugar, cut small. Slice two large gherkins and twelve small new cooked potatoes. Place all the above around the raw fish in the paper-bag, adding the juice of one lemon. Put one tablespoonful of melted butter over the vegetables, etc. Seal bag and place carefully on grid. Allow for one trout, half a pound, twenty minutes; one pound twenty-five minutes; one and a half pounds, thirty-five minutes; two pounds forty minutes — in hot oven (350° Fahr.). Any fish can be cooked in the same way by shortening or adding to the garnishing of the above recipe. Fresh mushrooms are always very welcome in cooking trout, salmon, turbot, whiting, halibut, eels, or any other kind of fish. This is a matter to be left to the taste of the cook. But NEVER omit to MIX up the flour with the cold fresh butter, to be laid well on the top of the fish. If you desire a sauce, put half a glass of claret with your fish in the paper bag. Light White Fish. Take any kind of light white fish. Roll in flour, then in a little milk, afterwards in breadcrumbs. Grease your paper-bag with butter, olive oil, or dripping. Put the fish in the bag and seal up. Place the bag on the grid in a very hot oven (350° Fahr.), and allow twenty minutes or so, according to size. Season to taste before serving. POULTRY AND GAME. Stuffed Chicken.