Heap a rice-crust-dish quite high with alternate layers of fine fresh strawberries stripped from the stalks, white and red currants, and white or red raspberries; strew each layer plentifully with sifted sugar, and just before the dish is sent to table, pour equally over the top two wineglassesful of sherry, Madeira, or any other good white wine. Very thick Devonshire cream may be laid entirely over the fruit, instead of the wine being mingled with it. Currants by themselves are excellent prepared in this way, and strawberries also. The fruit should be gently stirred with a spoon when it is served. Each variety must be picked with great nicety from the stalks.
PEACH SALAD.
Pare and slice half a dozen fine ripe peaches, arrange them in a dish, strew them with pounded sugar, and pour over them two or three glasses of champagne: other wine may be used, but this is best. Persons who prefer brandy can substitute it for wine. The quantity of sugar must be proportioned to the sweetness of the fruit.
ORANGE SALAD.
Take off the outer rinds, and then strip away entirely the white inside skin from some fine China oranges; slice them thin, and remove the seeds, and thick skin of the cores, as this is done; strew over them plenty of white sifted sugar, and pour on them a glass or more of brandy: when the sugar is dissolved serve the oranges. In France ripe pears of superior quality are sometimes sliced up with the oranges. Powdered sugar-candy used instead of sugar, is an improvement to this salad; and the substitution of port, sherry, or Madeira, for the brandy is often considered so. The fruit may be used without being pared, and a little curaçao or any other liqueur may be added to the brandy; or this last, when unmixed, may be burned after it is poured on the oranges.
TANGERINE ORANGES.
These beautiful little oranges, of which the rinds have a most peculiar, and to many tastes not a very agreeable flavour, are remarkably sweet and delicate when in their perfection; but they come later into the market than the more common varieties of the orange, and disappear from them sooner. They make a very refined salad, and also an ornamental rice-crust dish: their cost is somewhat higher than that of the Malta and St. Michael oranges. There is another species of this fruit known commonly as the blood-orange which has many admirers, but it is not we should say greatly superior to the more abundant kinds usually served at our tables.
PEACHES IN BRANDY.
(Rotterdam Receipt.)
Prepare and stew some fine full-flavoured peaches by the receipt of page [459], but with two ounces more of sugar to the half pint of water; when they are tender put them, with their syrup, into glass or new stone jars, which they should only half fill; and when they are quite cold pour in white, or very pale, French brandy to within an inch and a half of the brims: a few peach or apricot kernels can be added to them. The jars must be corked down.