well, a little over an inch in diameter, in the middle. Bake in a quick oven, and when lightly browned, glaze by brushing each over with white of egg and returning to the oven for a minute. Make ready as many sweetbreads as you need (two of fair size will make a good dish), previously prepared by boiling fifteen minutes in hot water, then made firm by plunging into very cold. Cut them into slices, season with pepper and salt, put into a covered saucepan with a great spoonful of butter and a very little water, and simmer gently until tender all through. Cut these in turn into very small squares, and mix with less than a cupful of white sauce. Return to the saucepan and heat almost to boiling, stirring carefully all the time. Fill the patés, arrange upon a hot dish, and send up at once.
White Sauce for the above.
1 small cupful of milk, heated to boiling in a custard-kettle, or tin pail set in hot water.
1 heaping teaspoonful corn-starch, wet with cold milk.
Salt and pepper to taste.
1 table-spoonful butter.
A little chopped parsley.
Stir the corn-starch into the boiling milk until it thickens well, then the butter and seasoning.
This mixture is useful in all similar preparations, but should be a little thicker for oysters than for meats.
Chicken Patés.
Line small paté-pans with good puff paste, let this get crisp in a cool place, and bake in a brisk oven. Stir minced chicken, well seasoned, into a good white sauce, heat through, fill the shells, set in the oven to brown very slightly, and serve.
Or,
Thicken the gravy left from the roast chicken with browned flour, add to the minced meat the yolk of one or two hard-boiled eggs, mashed fine; stir all together in a saucepan until hot, and fill the paste-shells. This is a brown mixture, and if not over-cooked, is very savory.
The remains of cold fowls, of any kind of game, and of veal, can be served up acceptably in this way. The patés should be small, that each person at table may take a whole one. If preferred, the paste can be cut round, as before directed, and baked without the tins.
Patés of Fish.
The cold remains of baked or boiled salmon, fresh cod or halibut.
Some good white sauce, richer than if intended for meat.
About one-fourth as much mashed potato as you have fish.
Yolks of two or three hard-boiled eggs rubbed to a paste with a spoonful, or so, of butter. This paste should be smooth and light.
Pepper and salt to taste, and a little chopped parsley.
Shells of good puff paste, baked quickly to a delicate brown and glazed with beaten egg.
Rub the sauce gradually into the mashed potato until both are free from lumps. When mixed, beat together to a cream. Season and stir in the fish (which should be “picked” very fine) with a silver fork, heaping it as you stir, instead of beating the mixture down. Do this quickly and lightly, fill the shells, set in the oven to heat through, and when smoking-hot draw to the oven door, and cover with the paste of egg and butter. A little cream may be added to this paste if it be not soft enough to spread easily. Shut the oven-door for two minutes, to heat the paste.
Serve the dish very hot, and send around sliced lemon with it, as some persons like to squeeze a few drops over the paté before eating.
Canned lobster and salmon are very good, thus prepared. Smoked salmon can be made palatable for this purpose by soaking over night, and boiling in two waters.
Swiss Patés.
Some slices of stale bread.
A little good dripping or very sweet lard mixed with the same quantity of butter.
Two or three eggs beaten light.
Very fine cracker-crumbs.
Minced fowl or veal mixed with white sauce, and well seasoned. Cut thick slices of stale bread—baker’s bread is best—into rounds with a cake-cutter. With a smaller cutter extract a piece from the middle of each round, taking care not to let the sharp tin go quite through the bread, but leaving enough in the cavity to serve as a bottom to the paté. Dip the hollowed piece of bread in the beaten egg, sift the pulverized cracker over it, and fry in the dripping, or lard and butter, to a delicate brown. Drain every drop of fat from it. Arrange upon a hot dish when all are done, heap up with the “mince,” and eat without delay.
Devilled crab or lobster is nice served in this style.
Bread patés are a convenience when the housekeeper has not time to spare for pastry-making. You can, if you like, fry them without the egg or cracker; but most persons would esteem them too rich.
Stella Paté.
3 cups minced veal or lamb—either roast or boiled. If underdone, it is an advantage, and if lamb be used, every particle of fat must be left out.
1 can French mushrooms, or a pint of fresh ones.
4 hard-boiled eggs cut into slices, and a sliced onion.
4 table-spoonfuls melted butter, or a cupful strong veal, lamb or fowl gravy.
3 cups fine bread-crumbs soaked in a cup of milk.
2 raw eggs beaten light and mixed with the milk.
Fry the mushrooms brown in dripping, or butter, with the onion, then chop rather coarsely. Work the crumbs, milk and raw eggs into a thick, smooth batter, with which line the bottom and sides of a well-greased mould or baking dish. Within this put a layer of the minced meat, seasoned to taste, wet with gravy or a little melted butter, and lay sliced egg over it. Next should come a layer of mushrooms, then another of meat, and so on, repeating the order given above until all your materials are used up, or the mould is full. The upper layer should be of the soaked crumbs. Cover closely and bake in a moderate oven half an hour, or until the outer crust is well “set.” Then set the mould, still covered, in a baking-pan half full of boiling water. Keep in the oven, which should be hotter than at first, fifteen minutes longer. Pass a thin sharp knife around the inside of the mould to loosen the paté from the sides, and turn out with care upon a hot flat dish. You should have a little brown gravy ready to pour over it.
If veal be the only meat used in preparing this dish, a layer of minced ham will improve the flavor.
If these directions be strictly followed, the entrée will be pleasing to both eye and palate.
Paté of beef and potato.
This is made according to the foregoing receipt, but substituting for the bread-crumb crust one of mashed potato beaten soft and smooth