SALADS AND OMELETS.
Chicken Salad.—Well-fattened chickens, of medium size, tender and delicate, make better salad than large, overgrown ones. Put them on to cook in the morning, and save the water they are boiled in for soup. When cold, remove the skin and cut the flesh in pieces, the size you prefer. Some like the meat very coarse, others choose it quite fine. This is entirely a matter of taste. When cut up, throw over the dish a towel slightly damped in cold water, to keep the meat from drying. Take the best celery you can get, and cut it of the size you wish. The “fancy cooks” cut both celery and chicken in bits about one inch long and half an inch thick, but we think the salad better cut finer. When the celery is cut, put it between clean cloths to dry perfectly, and then prepare the dressing. For dressing for two chickens, take three fourths of a bottle of the purest salad-oil or thick sweet cream, two scant table-spoonfuls of the best mustard, the yelks of two raw eggs and of twelve hard-boiled ones. Put the eggs to be boiled in a saucepan of cold water over a quick fire; bring to a boil, and let them boil hard ten minutes, then drop them into cold water. When cool, remove the shells. Break the raw eggs, and drop the yelks into a dish large enough to make all the dressing in; beat them, stirring the same way, for ten minutes; then slowly add the mustard, mix it with the eggs thoroughly, then add a teaspoonful of the best vinegar, and, when this is well mixed, add the oil, a drop at a time, stirring constantly and always the same way. Then rub the yelks of the hard-boiled eggs very smooth, and stir in as lightly as possible a teacup of vinegar; pour it slowly into the first mixture, stirring with a silver fork. Now season the chicken and celery with salt and pepper, and as soon as ready for use pour on the dressing. If set where it is too cold in cold weather, the dressing will curdle and be ruined.
Italian Chicken Salad.—Make a dressing in the proportion of the yelks of three hard-boiled eggs, rubbed fine, one salt-spoonful of salt, one of mustard, and one of cayenne pepper, one of white sugar, four table-spoonfuls of salad-oil, and two table-spoonfuls of vinegar. Simmer this dressing over the fire, but don’t let it boil. Stir constantly while over the fire. Then take a sufficient quantity of the white meat of cold chicken for this quantity of dressing, or increase in this proportion to the desired quantity; pull the white meat into small flakes, pile it up in a dish, and pour the dressing on it. Take two heads of fine, fresh lettuce that have been washed and laid in water, take out the best part, cut it up, and arrange in a heap around the chicken, heaped in the middle of the dish, and on the top of this ridge place the whites of eggs, cut in rings and laid in form of a chain. A portion of the lettuce to be helped with each plate of chicken.
Lobster Salad.—Boil the lobsters half an hour; when cold, take from the shell; remove the vein in the back, which is not good. Two heads of lettuce, one cup of melted butter, two table-spoonfuls of mustard mixed with a little vinegar, is sufficient for six pounds of lobster; after being taken from the shell, salt and pepper to your taste, remembering that more can be added if not enough; but if too much, it is not so easily rectified. Chop them together and put in the salad-dish. Beat six eggs with a teacup of vinegar, put it over the stove to thicken, stirring it all the time; when cold, spread over the lobster.
Potato Salad.—Cut ten or twelve cold boiled potatoes into slices from a quarter to half an inch thick; put into a salad-bowl with four table-spoonfuls of tarragon or plain vinegar, six table-spoonfuls of best salad-oil, one teaspoonful of minced parsley, and pepper and salt to taste; stir well that all be thoroughly mixed. It should be made two or three hours before needed on the table. Anchovies, olives, or any pickles may be added to this salad, as also slices of cold beef, chicken, or turkey, if desired.
Plain Omelet.—Put your omelet-pan on the stove with a spoonful of butter; keep it so hot that the butter will almost brown in it, but not quite; break six fresh eggs into a clean bowl; if fresh, the whites will be clear and the yelks quite round; add a teaspoonful of milk for every egg, and whip the whole as thoroughly as for sponge-cake. When light, put the whipped eggs and milk into the omelet-pan and set it directly over the fire. As it begins to cool, take a thin-bladed knife and run it carefully under the bottom of the egg, so as to let that which is not cooked run beneath. If the fire is right, the whole mass will instantly puff and swell and cook in a minute, but great care is needed that it does not burn on the bottom, as scorched egg is very disagreeable and would ruin the whole. It is not necessary to wait till the whole mass is solid, for its own heat will cook it after it has been taken up, but begin to clear it at one side at once and carefully.
Puff Omelet.—Take the yelks of six eggs and the whites of three; beat very light. Take a teacup of cream (milk will answer) and mix with it very smoothly one table-spoonful of flour; salt and pepper to suit your taste; pour this into the beaten eggs. Melt a great spoonful of butter in a pan, and when hot pour in the mixture and set the pan into a hot oven. When it thickens up, pour over it the other three whites that were saved out, which you must have all ready, beaten very light. Return to the oven just long enough for a delicate brown, then slip out on a dish so that the top part shall remain uppermost.
Oyster Omelet.—Beat four eggs very light; cut out the hard part, or eye, from a dozen oysters; wipe them dry and cut into small pieces; stir them into the beaten egg, and fry in hot butter. When the under side is a light brown, sprinkle a very little salt and pepper over the top, and fold one half of the omelet over the other. Never turn an omelet; it makes it heavy and ruins it.
Omelet with Jelly.—Beat separately the yelks and whites of four fresh eggs; add to the yelks sufficient sugar to sweeten to your taste, and an even dessert-spoonful of corn flour very smoothly beaten in a table-spoonful of cream. Beat this with the yelks till perfectly smooth, and stir in the well-beaten whites very gently, so as to break the froth as little as possible; pour the whole into a frying-pan in which some butter has been melted, but drain off the butter before adding the eggs, etc. Put it over the fire,—two or three minutes will cook the under side; hold the pan to the fire till the under side looks firm, then spread raspberry or strawberry jam over one half; turn the other over it, and serve immediately.
Baked Omelet.—Boil half a pint of milk; beat six eggs thoroughly, yelks and whites separately; put half a teaspoonful of salt and a piece of butter half as large as an egg to the boiling milk; stir it into the beaten eggs; pour all instantly into a deep dish and bake. If the oven is hot, five minutes will bake it; not quite so hot an oven and a little longer time will be better,—say ten minutes. It should be of a delicate brown on top, and eaten right from the oven.
Omelette Soufflee.—Beat the whites of four eggs to a stiff froth; then add the yelks well beaten, with three table-spoonfuls of powdered sugar and the rind and juice of one lemon. Beat all well together, and bake in a moderately hot oven five minutes; serve immediately.