EPICUREAN SAUCE.—
Pound in a mortar five or six anchovies; a heaped table-spoonful of minced tarragon leaves; a shalot, or very small onion, two or three pickled gherkins, finely minced; the yolks of four hard-boiled eggs, a quarter of a pound of fresh butter, and a large table-spoonful of French mustard. If you have no good butter, mix a sufficient portion of olive oil to moisten it well. Let the whole be thoroughly mixed. Put it into a bowl, and set it on ice till wanted. Then mould it into pats of equal size. Arrange them on small glass or china plates, and send them to table for dinner company, to eat with the cheese.
EAST INDIA SAUCE FOR FISH.—
Mix well together a jill of India soy; a jill of chili vinegar; half a pint of walnut catchup, and a pint of mushroom-catchup. Shake the whole hard, and transfer it to small green bottles, putting a tea-spoonful of sweet oil at the top of each, and keep the sauce in a cool dry place. If you have not a fish castor, bring the store sauces to table in the small bottles they are kept in. When eating fish, mix a little of this with the melted butter on your plate.
CURRY POWDER.—
Curry powder originates in India, where it is much used as a peculiar flavoring for soups, stews, and hashes. With curry dishes, boiled rice is always served up, not only in a separate dish, but also heaped round the stew in a thick even border. To make curry powder, pound in a marble mortar three ounces of turmeric, three ounces of coriander seed, and a quarter of an ounce of cayenne; one ounce of mustard, one ounce of cardamoms, a half ounce of cummin seed, and half an ounce of mace. Let all these ingredients be thoroughly mixed in the mortar, and then sift it through a fine sieve, dry it for an hour before the fire, and put it into clean bottles, securing the corks well. Use from two to three table-spoonfuls at a time, in proportion to the size of the dish you intend to curry.
It may be mixed into the gravy of any of the preceding receipts for stews. Two ounces of finely grated cocoa-nut is a pleasant improvement to curried dishes, and is universally liked.
The curry powder you buy is frequently much adulterated with inferior articles. The best curry powder imported from India is of a dark green color, and not yellow or red. It has among its ingredients, tamarinds, not preserved, as we always get them—but raw in the shell. These tamarinds impart a pleasant acid to the mixture. For want of them use a lemon.