By LA MÉNAGÈRE.
lorious June! Can anyone complain of a lack of the least good thing? Rather we have un embarras de richesse; so much so, indeed, that we hardly know what to select for our typical menu. Look at the vegetable market, for instance. See the piles of snowy cauliflowers, the crisp cabbages and spinach, the quantities of salad stuffs, cucumbers, spring carrots and turnips, asparagus, artichokes, peas and French beans, while the very potatoes look attractive. Then see the fruit, the ever-welcome green gooseberries, strawberries, early raspberries, and ripe cherries galore. The fruiterers have golden apricots, nectarines, custard apples, and many other luscious things. The fishmongers are showing plovers’ eggs in their little nests of moss, the pinkest of prawns and crabs, scarlet lobsters in a garnish of parsley, magnificent salmon, salmon-trout, speckled trout, and beautiful fine soles, with mackerel that glisten like the whitebait.
Game is, of course, of no account now; but young chickens are coming to the fore, and pigeons are excellent, so also are the plovers.
Then look at the wealth of June blossom that is poured into the market. Can anything surpass the beauty of these roses? Lilies and hydrangeas, snowy narcissi, gorgeous tulips, iris, and peonies, and if you can find a sweeter or a more splendid flower than a blush peony of the Dutch variety, you will be clever indeed. Sweet mignonette, sweet peas, and still sweeter pinks, make the air quite heavy with their fragrance. Then we have quantities of beautiful grasses, mosses, ferns, and foliage plants here for all sorts of purposes, for June is the harvest month of the floral decorator. Dinners, balls, receptions, weddings, at homes—all make great demand on the markets this month.
The place of game at fashionable dinners is taken by plovers’ eggs, or by an aspic jelly. As the eggs are usually sold ready boiled, and require no accompaniment, we may leave them without further remark; but it might be useful here if we considered the making of a simple aspic jelly such as could be manufactured by the home cook.
Aspic Jelly.—Get a knuckle-bone of veal and one of ham and crack them in pieces. Put with them a large onion, with two cloves, a large carrot, a bunch of savoury herbs, and two quarts of water. Let these simmer gently in a brown stone jar for several hours, then strain off. To a pint of this stock (which should be perfectly clear) add one ounce of Swinborne’s isinglass previously soaked in cold water, also a teaspoonful of salt, a little pepper, a tablespoonful of tarragon vinegar; and then a wineglassful of strong sherry. Stir over the fire until it nearly boils, then break into the liquor the whites of two eggs and the shells, stir well, and draw to the side of the fire; let it simmer for a quarter of an hour, then strain through a jelly-bag three or four times until it is perfectly clear. Keep the mould in a very cold place until it is wanted. The quart should make two moulds of jelly. A good jelly will keep for some time, and is often most useful for an invalid.
An aspic of game or poultry makes an excellent luncheon dish, and will prove an easy and dainty way of serving up the remains of cold poultry, etc.
Pour some ready-made aspic jelly into the bottom of a plain round mould which has been wetted with cold water. Next make a layer of stars and diamonds from the white and yellow of a hard-boiled egg, a few fine sprigs of parsley, and the red part of a cold tongue here and there. Let this set, then lay on thin slices of cold fowl and ham, leaving plenty of space to run more jelly in between. Fill the mould up to the top with jelly, then put it away to set. When quite stiff turn it out on to a dish.
Suppose that for our June menu we take the following: