Melt one and a half tablespoons of butter. Drop into it a quarter of a pound of blanched almonds, and hot up till the almonds are well burned, brown but not black. Drain them on blotting-paper and sprinkle them with plenty of salt and a little Paprika.
The Devil.
One can devil bones, biscuits, meat and fish in a Chafing Dish very nearly as well as on the grill. Care must be taken always to score the flesh across with deep incisions, so that the devil mixture penetrates well into the meat. This is the best devil mixture for Chafing-Dish purposes that I know. There may be better, but I have not come across them. Mix well upon a plate a teaspoon of mustard, the same of Worcester sauce and anchovy sauce, two teaspoons of olive oil and half a teaspoon of Paprika. Let the meat soak up this mixture, and then hot it up in a tablespoon of butter till it almost boils. A chicken drumstick makes the best devil in the world, but biscuits dipped in the mixture are not to be despised, and even slices of cold cooked meat, beef or mutton, are very toothsome if treated in the same manner. Any cold bird makes an excellent devil.
Macaroni.
Although it may not come quite strictly under the head of Eggs and Savouries, this seems about the right place to expatiate upon Macaroni, the national food of Italy and the delight of every cultivated nation.
Real macaroni is made of hard wheat of a semi-translucent kind, which is richer in gluten and other nitrogenous matter than soft wheat. Macaroni is nothing but flour and water mixed in a cylinder, which concocts it into stiff paste. Then it is rolled under a huge granite wheel which flattens it into a smooth mass. It is cut into squares, and flattened by the wheel again and again until it is thoroughly kneaded. The dough then goes into an upright metal cylinder closed at the lower end with a thick disc of copper. This is pierced with openings through which a plunge-piston squeezes the dough into threads. The threads are cut off at regular intervals, and hung upon wooden drying-rods. Real macaroni is tender, yellowish, rough in texture, and elastic. It breaks with a clean, porcelainlike fracture. When it boils it swells to twice its size, and does not become sticky, but keeps its tubular form without collapse. It will keep any length of time in a dry cool place.
There are many agreeable variations on the macaroni theme, some of which suggest music rather than cooking. Everybody knows Vermicelli, but among the lesser known but equally admirable kinds are Tagliatelli, Lasagnete, Fuselli, Bicorni, Candele, Cannelloni, Pennoni, Capelli di Angelo, and many more. Each has its own little special peculiarity. All are alike excellent.
Tagliatelli.
Perhaps the handiest for Chafing-Dish purposes is Tagliatelli. Boil two pints of water in the Dish, put in half a pound of Tagliatelli, boil eight minutes, then strain. Return to the Dish, add a tablespoon of grated Parmesan cheese, and the same of butter. Toss round and round until well mixed, and serve very hot. Tomatoes mix well with macaroni, and so do mushrooms; but the real macaroni-lover will prefer it by itself, accompanied always, of course, by plenty of cheese. Mustard mixes well with it, but be very chary of the salt, for it is already salted during the process of preparation. To make macaroni au gratin, which seems (unaccountably enough) to be the only way in which it is served in nine British households out of ten, the top of the cooked macaroni must be well covered with grated Parmesan cheese, and then carefully browned with a salamander.
Ravioli.