LUNCH DISHES

Lobster Marivaux style (199)
Poached egg aspic (137)
Veal sweetbreads with asparagus tips (200)
Bordeaux mushrooms (201)
Flemish pigeons (130)
Chocolate praline cream (136)

DINNER DISHES

Watercress soup (202)
Portuguese eggs (166)
Chicken in jelly (114)
Sorrel in juice (203)
Baby ducklings Béarnaise style (160)
Peaches Valois style (204)

199. Lobster Marivaux style.
A 600 gram lobster, 80 grams of butter, 20 grams of flour, 125 grams of grated Gruyère cheese, 10 grams of salt, 10 grams of mustard flour, a little cayenne pepper, a quarter of a liter of milk, two liters of water, a Madeira glass of vinegar, 20 grams of salt.

Boil two liters of salted and vinegared water, 20 grams of salt and a Madeira glass of vinegar. When it is boiling, plunge the lobster into it, having taken care to tie it up well beforehand. Let it cook for ten minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and leave the lobster in it for another five or six minutes. Then, drain it, resting it on its head.

Sauce.
Melt 20 grams of butter, mix in the flour, add two deciliters of milk. While stirring this preparation, leave it on the heat until boiling, but then only let it boil for a few seconds. Remove from the heat.

Dilute the mustard flour with the little milk that you have kept in reserve, add the cayenne pepper; mix this with your sauce, which, by the way, was until now a béchamel. Put your sauce back on the heat until it boils again, and proceed as the first time, that is to say remove from the heat after boiling for a few seconds only. Off the heat, therefore, scatter over this cream sauce the remaining 60 grams of butter, divided into very small pieces; place them gently on the surface of the sauce, without stirring, so that they do not mix with it.

Final preparation and gratin.
Cut the lobster in half, lengthwise. Remove the flesh, cut it into strips, as well as the coral and the gray part; discard the internal organ which, in this crustacean, fulfills the role of crop, and which is easily recognizable by the impure materials with which it is garnished. Put all the rest in the sauce, as well as three-quarters of the grated cheese.

Refill the two halves of the large shell, from which you have previously removed the flesh; that is to say, put everything back in, strips of flesh, coral, everything that is good to eat, including the thick sauce. Sprinkle with the remaining cheese and brown in a hot oven for ten minutes. Serve with hot plates.

200. Sweetbreads with asparagus tips.

Two sweetbreads, salt, pepper, two eggs, white breadcrumbs, butter, asparagus tips, two tablespoons of good roast veal juice.

Soak your sweetbreads for two hours in cold water, taking care to change the water three or four times. Then have a saucepan containing boiling water, and put the sweetbreads in it; let it boil for a little longer, then remove from the heat. When you see, by pressing your finger, that the sweetbreads have firmed up, transfer them immediately to a tureen three-quarters full of very cold water. When they have cooled well, drain them on a porcelain strainer; pat them dry in a towel. After that, it is a question of giving them a flat shape; to do this, place on the towel where they are a lid that you load with a sufficient weight and hold them for a quarter of an hour in a press. Then, prepare them, by cutting off the horn and the useless parts.

These preliminary operations being completed, season your sweetbreads with salt and pepper, then flour them lightly. Then pass them in the beaten eggs and cover them well with white breadcrumbs. Then put them in a sauté pan with good fine butter and cook them until their breadcrumb coating has taken on a nice golden blond color.

On the other hand, you will have sautéed in butter some asparagus tips previously half-cooked in boiling salted water and drained perfectly. Thus sautéed, you place them in the middle of the serving dish, a round and slightly hollow dish, prepared very hot; you sprinkle them with two tablespoons of good roast veal juice. The end of this preparation must coincide with the end of cooking of the breaded sweetbreads; if the asparagus tips are ready a little earlier, you keep them warm by placing the dish on a container filled with boiling water. Arrange the sweetbreads in a crown on the dish and serve immediately with hot plates.

201. Porcini mushrooms à la bordelaise.
A pound and a half of porcini mushrooms, parsley, shallots, olive oil, salt, pepper, lemon juice.

Detach the stems, peel them well, as well as the cap, the part called "tubes" of which is not edible and comes off as easily as hay from the artichoke. Throw the porcini mushrooms quickly into fresh water as you peel them; after which, dry them on a cloth. Chop the stems with shallots and parsley.

Put some good olive oil on the heat in a sauté pan; when it is very hot, that is to say as soon as the smoke rises, put the porcini mushrooms, which are well dried, into this oil. Then cook over high heat for ten minutes. As soon as the porcini mushrooms take on color, add the chopped stems, shallots and parsley. Salt, pepper with freshly ground white pepper, sprinkle with lemon juice, and serve immediately in a dish or vegetable dish.

202. Watercress soup.

A bunch of watercress, pot-au-feu broth, a few potatoes, stale bread the size of an egg.

Peel a bunch of watercress, wash the leaves very carefully and chop them very finely. In pot-au-feu broth, or, if necessary, simply in salted water, cook a few potatoes and stale bread. When the potatoes have melted, pass the sauce through a fine sieve. Put this purée on the fire, which should be very light; add the chopped watercress and a good knob of very fresh butter. Let it cook for a few minutes, and serve in the soup tureen with or without croutons of bread.

203. Sorrel with juice.

One kilo of sorrel, 80 grams of butter, salt, pepper, five spoonfuls of good roast veal or poultry juice, toasted and buttered croutons of bread, two egg yolks.

Peel and wash the sorrel in fresh water. Boil water in a large saucepan; do not salt this water; when it boils, throw in the sorrel that you have taken care to squeeze between your hands; let your sorrel cook for three or four minutes in this boiling water. After which, take a horsehair sieve, and put the sorrel in it so that it drains. Then chop it very finely. Then put the sorrel in a saucepan with 80 grams of fine, very fresh butter.

Place over moderate heat, salt, pepper; cook the chopped sorrel in this way, stirring it with the wooden spoon until it is well melted.

Finally, mix with this purée five spoonfuls of good roast veal or roast poultry juice, and work this mixture, always using the wooden spoon. Remove the saucepan to the corner of the stove.

In a deep plate, beat one or two egg yolks with a fork, then add them to the puréed sorrel. Have, in addition, six or eight pretty croutons of toasted and buttered bread; put the sorrel in a very hot vegetable dish; arrange the croutons on the purée; serve immediately.

204. Peaches à la Valois.

Sixteen beautiful, tender, not too ripe peaches, sugar syrup, sixteen red plums, 250 grams of Caroline rice, three-quarters of a liter of milk, sugar and vanilla, a few spoonfuls of cream, a few spoonfuls of redcurrant jelly.

Throw your peaches into a saucepan full of slightly acidulated boiling water, where you leave them for two minutes. As soon as the skin of the peaches wrinkles, remove them using a copper skimmer, cut them in half; remove the stone and throw your half-peaches into a very reduced sugar syrup; five minutes of cooking in this syrup is more than enough. Remove the half-peaches, and place them in a terrine.

In the syrup from which you have just removed them, cook sixteen red plums, which you have first given a first and short cooking in boiling water as you did with the peaches earlier. But the plums must remain whole. After their second cooking in syrup, reserve them in another terrine.

On the other hand, burst and cook 250 grams of Caroline rice in three quarters of a liter of sweetened and vanilla milk. To do this, put everything together and cold in a saucepan, half of the milk with the rice washed in cold water. Boil very slowly, barely stirring the rice. When the milk is absorbed, you add the rest of your milk little by little, but this second part of the milk must be boiling. If the cooking is done carefully, your rice should become creamy, smooth and very thick.

Towards the end, you add a few tablespoons of milk cream. Have a crown-shaped mold, in which you pour a few spoonfuls of redcurrant jelly. On this jelly, you arrange half-peaches, and, on these, you spread a layer of cooled rice; then, half of your whole plums; on these plums, another layer of rice, until the mold is full. Let set with salted ice, then carefully unmold.

Fill the empty center with whipped cream; decorate with redcurrant jelly, and surround the crown with the remaining half-peaches and plums, alternating red and white. Reduce the syrup in which your fruits have cooked and pour it over the fruits.

THE HOUSEHOLD'S CRICKET.