Miss Parloa's New Cook Book

by Maria Parloa

To make the sauce: Skim all the fat from the gravy in which the fillets were cooked. Cook one table-spoonful of butter and one heaping teaspoonful of flour together until a light brown; then add the gravy, and boil up once. Taste to see if seasoned enough, and strain.

Chicken Fillets, Sauté.

Flatten the fillets by pounding them lightly with the vegetable masher. Season with pepper and salt, and dredge well with flour. Put in the frying-pan one table-spoonful of butter for each fillet, and when hot, put the fillets in, and cook rather slowly twenty minutes. Brown on both sides. Take up, and keep hot while making the sauce. If there are six fillets, add two table-spoonfuls of butter to that remaining in the frying-pan, and when melted, stir in one table-spoonful of flour. Stir until it begins to brown slightly; then slowly add one and a half cupfuls of cold milk, stirring all the while. Let this boil one minute. Season with salt, pepper and, if you like, a little mustard. Fill the centre of a hot dish with green peas or mashed potatoes, against which rest the fillets; and pour the sauce around. Serve very hot.

Chicken Curry.

One chicken, weighing three pounds; three-fourths of a cupful of butter, two large onions, one heaping table-spoonful of curry powder, three tomatoes, or one cupful of the canned article, enough cayenne to cover a silver three-cent piece, salt, one cupful of milk. Put the butter and the onions, cut fine, on to cook. Stir all the while until brown; then put in the chicken, which has been cut in small pieces, the curry, tomatoes, salt and pepper. Stir well. Cover tightly, and let simmer one hour, stirring occasionally; then add the milk. Boil up once, and serve with boiled rice. This makes a very rich and hot curry, but for the real lover of the dish, none too much so.

Veal Curry.

Two pounds of veal, treated in the same manner, but cooked two hours. Mutton and lamb can be used in a like way.

Chicken Quenelles.

One large chicken or tender fowl, weighing about three pounds; six table-spoonfuls of butter, one table-spoonful of chopped salt pork, three eggs, one teaspoonful of onion juice, one of lemon juice, half a cupful of white stock or cream, one cupful of stale bread, one of new milk, and salt and pepper to taste. Skin the chicken, take all the flesh from the bones, and chop and pound very fine. Mix the pork with it, and rub through a flour sieve. Cook the bread and milk together for ten minutes, stirring often, to get smooth. Add this to the chicken, and then add the seasoning, stock or cream, yolks of eggs, one by one, and lastly the whites, which have been beaten to a stiff froth.

Cover the sides and bottom of a frying-pan with soft butter. Take two table-spoons and a bowl of boiling water. Dip one spoon in the water, and then fill it with force-meat, heaping it; then dip the other spoon in the hot water, and turn the contents of the first into it. This gives the quenelle the proper shape; and it should at once be slipped into the frying-pan. Continue the operation until all the meat is shaped. Cover the quenelles with white stock, boiling, and slightly salted, and cook gently twenty minutes. Take them up, and drain for a minute; then arrange on a border of mashed potatoes or fried bread. Pour a spoonful of either Bechamel, mushroom or olive sauce on each, and the remainder in the centre of the dish. Serve hot.