A domestic duck ought to be served quite rare, and should be killed without bleeding. Dish it after untrussing and pour over it a little of its gravy.
Sauce Bigarade: Peel an orange without touching the white parts, cut the peel up into small, fine julienne. Plunge it into boiling water, and cook until it is tender. Drain and enclose it in a covered saucepan with four gills of espagnole or brown sauce. Just when ready to serve finish the sauce with a dash of cayenne pepper, meat glaze, the orange juice and the juice of a lemon, strain through a tamis, adding two ounces of fine butter.
LXIX
S. S. McClure
OMELETTE—AND PIE
I can give you a tip on how to prepare, in the very best fashion, two articles of food.
The first is omelette: The frying pan should be held at a slant, with the lower part immediately over a moderate heat, and continually the volume of eggs that becomes cooked should be scraped back and the liquid part allowed to flow over the pan thus emptied, and then when the omelette is, I should say, about two-thirds cooked, it should be removed from the fire and dished.
It is impossible to make an omelette of the utmost symmetry and firmness and have it good at the same time. If it is stiff enough to maintain a certain symmetry, then it is too stiff to be good. I have made an omelette in this fashion containing as many as eighteen eggs. I learned how to make omelette from Madame Poulard of Mont St. Michel in Normandy, one of the most famous omelette makers in Europe.
I am also particularly successful in making pies. On one occasion I made pies for one hundred and eighty-five officers on the troop-ship Leviathan. To make pies, one must have the best quality of butter and the best quality of flour. Use a pound of butter to every two pounds of flour. The butter must be rather firm and must be mixed with the flour with your hands. Then when you have a sort of a mass of dough on the table, make a little hollow in the middle, pour in a little cold water, mix it to such a consistency that it can be made into a roll perhaps as thick as your wrist. It will require about two inches to be rolled out thin for the crusts. Dust a little flour in the dish that it is to be baked in and put into the oven at such a temperature as would require one half an hour to bake. There’s a considerable secret in the choice of fruits. The top crust should have little apertures in it so as to permit the steam to escape. It is easier to make perfect pies than any other dish.