You can buy very nice, fresh crab meat in tins, and the shells also. A very delicious dish is made by mixing a cup of rich cream sauce with the crab meat, seasoning it well with salt and pepper and putting in the crab-shells; cover with crumbs, dot with butter, and brown in the oven. This is a nice thing to have for a company luncheon.
Creamed Chicken or Turkey
2 cups of cold chicken. 1 large cup of white or creamed sauce. 1/2 teaspoonful of chopped parsley. Salt and pepper.
Pick the chicken or turkey off the bones and cut into small bits before you measure it. Heat it in the sauce till very hot, but do not let it boil, and add the seasoning,—about half a teaspoonful of salt, and a tiny bit of cayenne, or as much celery-salt in the place of the common kind. Put in a large buttered dish and serve, or in small dishes, either with crumbs on top or not.
A nice addition to this dish is half a green pepper, the seeds taken out, chopped very fine indeed, and mixed with the white meat; the contrast of colors is pretty and the taste improved.
Scalloped Eggs
6 hard-boiled eggs. 1 cup cream or white sauce. 1 cup fine bread-crumbs. Salt and pepper.
Cook the eggs twenty minutes, and while they are cooking make the white sauce, and butter one large or six small dishes. Peel the eggs and cut them into bits as large as the end of your finger. Put a layer of bread-crumbs on the bottom of the dish, then a layer of egg, then a sprinkling of salt, pepper, and bits of butter, then a layer of white sauce. Then more crumbs, egg, and seasoning, till the dish is full, with crumbs on top. Put bits of butter over all and brown in the oven.
Eggs in Double Cream
This is a rule Margaret's Pretty Aunt got in Paris, and it is a very nice one. Have half a pint of very thick cream—the kind you use to whip; the French call this double cream. Cook six eggs hard and cut them into bits. Butter a baking-dish, or small dishes, and put in a layer of egg, then a layer of cream, then a sprinkling of salt, and one of paprika, which is sweet red pepper. Put one thin layer of fine, sifted crumbs on top with butter, and brown in the oven. Or you can put the eggs and cream together and heat them, and serve on thin pieces of buttered toast, with one extra egg put through the ricer over the whole.