Cauliflower Salad. Boil a cauliflower till tender, but not so as to break in pieces; when cold cut it up neatly into small sprigs. Beat up three tablespoonfuls of oil added gradually to one tablespoonful of tarragon vinegar, and half a tablespoonful of common vinegar, add pep per and salt to taste. Rub the dish very slightly with garlic; arrange the pieces of caulitloWer on it, strew over them some capers, a little tarragon, chervil, and parsley, all finely minced, and the least bit of powdered dried thyme and marjoram. Pour the oil and vinegar over and serve. The cauliflower should be fresh and carefully boiled, and the salad not too much flavored. The gar lic may be omitted, or an eschalot finely minced used instead.
Sauces. As beef stock is the foundation of all meat soups, so plain melted butter is the foundation of most of our sauces. All starchy compounds when exposed to heat and moisture begin to swell and then burst. If you were to see the starch of flour, or any kind of starch, under a microscope, the particles would appear something like the shape of a flattened egg. These particles are called granules, and they are made up of cells, which burst in cooking. Un cooked starch is anything but pleasant. Now the art of making melted butter consists in bursting the starch cells of flour in the presence of sufficient fat or butter, so that the starch is well cooked. Making melted butter is one of those simple things which every servant of all work is expected to know by instinct, but it is one of those- things rarely ever properly done. It is often brought to the table more like starch, or billsticker's paste, than melted butter. It has always been our chief sauce, and has obtained for us the distinction of a nation with twenty religions and one sauce, a circumstance, prob ably, which led the late Earl of Dudley to speak of one of the Barons of the exchequer as a good man, sir,most religious man, he had the best melted butter I ever tasted.
Plain Melted Butter. Suppose we wish to make a pint of melted butter:—Take three ounces of good butter; one ounce of flour; a pinch of pepper and salt; half a pint of warm water • put one ounce of the three ounces of butter and the one ounce of flour into a quart stewpan, mix the butter and flour into a soft paste, add the pepper and salt and half a pint of warm water. Stir over the fire with a wooden spoon till the contents boil. If it should be too thick (which will depend on the flour, for some flour requires more water), add half a gill or so of warm water, before putting iu the remainder of the butter. The sauce should then be thick enough to coat the spoon. Cut the remaining two ounces of butter into pieces to acceler ate the melting, take the stewpan off the fire and stir till the butter is melted. It must not be placed ou the fire again. The great point in preparing melted butter is this:—as soon as it has come to the boil to take it off the fire, and then add the cold butter, which gives it the fla vor. The failure in properly making melted
butter may arise from the flour being in excess, which destroys the flavor of the butter; or it may arise from mixing the whole quantity of butter with the flour at once. If too thin, mix a tablespoonful of flour with half an ounce of cold butter, take the sauce off the fire and allow it to cool for a few minutes, add the mixture of flour and butter and stir while off the fire. When melted, put the sauce over the fire again till just boiling, then add a small piece of butter before serving. The essential condition of suc cess is that the flour and butter should be of the very best, or good, melted butter is impossible, no matter what recipe is followed. The butter, unless good and fresh, gives an unpleasant flavor to the sauce. Melted butter is sometimes pre ferred slightly acid, when a little lemon juice is stirred into the sauce before serving. All plain sauces should have a simple but decided charac ter, and be served as hot as possible. They should, therefore, never be made until just before they are required for use. Sauces with -liaisons or creams should be well stirred, and never allowed to boil after the liaison or cream is added. The same care must he exercised with lemon juice, pickles and other acid mixtures. For sauces use clean stewpaus, those of enamel or porcelain are the best, and stir always with a wooden spoon.
Rand, Parsley, and Tarragon Sauces. A little fennel blanched for a few minutes in boiling water and finely minced, then stirred into the butter, makes fennel sauce, and so with tarragon or parsley.
Mayonnaise Sauce. This sauce is used as a dressing for salad and cold meat or fowl, it is the foundation of all cold sauces, and must be well made. Separate thoroughly the yolk of one egg and put it into a basin with half a table spoonful of tarragon vinegar, one tablespoon ful of good vinegar, and just a little salt and pepper. Mix these with a wooden spoon, then take the oil bottle and place your thumb over the top and let the oil fall in at short intervals, drop by drop, and well mix. The great art is to thoroughly mix the oil before adding more. After adding about forty or fifty drops of oil you may now add it, in quantities of a teaspoon ful, till you have used about four ounces alto gether, which will make about half a pint of sauce. Taste it, and add more vinegar or pepper, and salt,. if necessary. As a rule this sauce should be well seasoned. If desirable, slightly rub the basin in which the sauce ia mixed with an escbalot or garlic. Some think a finely minced escha]ot and parsley are agreeable additions to this sauce. Thoroughly stir in the oil till the sauce is of the consistency of cream.