Chop cooked chicken very fine; pound it to as much of a paste as possible; season with salt and pepper; mix it with half its quantity of Chaudfroid sauce (see page [281]). Coat a mold with jelly (see page [323]), and fill it with the mixture, which must be cold and beginning to set; when it has hardened, turn it onto a dish; garnish with lettuce and serve with it a Mayonnaise or a Béarnaise sauce. Game may be used in the same way. Ornamented individual timbale cups may also be used for molding the purée.
OYSTER-CRABS
Put into a saucepan two tablespoonfuls of butter and a gill of water, one teaspoonful of lemon-juice, a little salt and white pepper. When the liquid is warm, put a few of the crabs in at a time and cook until they begin to whiten, then skim them out and keep them in a warm place until all are cooked. The liquid must only simmer; if it is too hot the crabs will break open. The crabs should be just moistened with the sauce in which they are cooked. Serve in croustades, or in fontage cups (see page [300]).
ENTRÉE OF OYSTER-CRABS
Use for this entrée individual shirred-egg dishes. Cut slices of bread one inch thick; with a biscuit-cutter stamp it into circles one inch smaller than the egg dish, and with a smaller cutter stamp out the center, making rings of the bread one inch thick, one inch wide, and one inch smaller than the egg dishes. Place the bread rings in the dishes and moisten them with cream; fill the space outside the rings with oyster-crabs cooked as directed above; spread one layer of crabs in the center of each ring and on them break an egg. Cover the whole with Béchamel sauce and sprinkle the top with grated Parmesan cheese. Place this in a hot oven just long enough to set the egg.
TERRAPIN, FROGS’ LEGS
TERRAPIN
Counts. Terrapin measuring six inches or more across the bottom shell are called “counts.” The largest do not exceed ten inches; the average size is seven inches, and weight three to five pounds. The counts vary in price from seventeen to eighty dollars a dozen, according to size and weight.
Diamond backs. The terrapin which are most esteemed, and which command the highest price, are the “Diamond Back,” from the Chesapeake Bay. Probably it is the wild celery of this region which gives the especially prized flavor to the terrapin as well as to the Canvasback ducks taken there. Good terrapin, however, are taken in Long Island waters and all along the sea-coast.
Season. Terrapin burrow in the mud as soon as cold weather approaches and remain there until May, during which time they grow fat. They are caught during their season of hibernation, and are kept in cool, dark places packed in sea grass until wanted; the season for eating them being from December to April. Terrapin taken during the summer are rank in taste and unfit for food, and are confined in pens and fed on celery.