Choice Cookery

in it. ENTREES OF SWEETBREADS. _Sweetbreads a la Supreme._--Take two plump sweetbreads, lay them an hour in strong salt and water, then boil them for ten minutes in fresh water; put them between two plates to flatten till cold. Cut off all the gristle and loose skin from underneath; put them to stew _very gently_ in half a pint of good-flavored stock. Take them up, drain well, and stew them in half a pint of sauce supreme, with a dozen small mushrooms, for ten minutes. _Sweetbreads with Oysters._--Prepare the sweetbreads as in the foregoing recipe, quarter them, and put them in a stewpan with a gill of white stock, the strained liquor from two dozen oysters, a saltspoonful of salt, a pinch of pepper, and a suspicion of nutmeg. Put two ounces of butter in a stewpan over the fire, stir into it one tablespoonful of fine flour; let them bubble together, stirring the while, one minute. When the sweetbreads have been simmering twenty minutes, pour the gravy from them to the sauce; stir quickly till smooth. If thicker than very thick cream, add a little more stock. In five minutes add the oysters. Keep _at boiling-point_, but not boiling, till the oysters are firm and plump. Do not leave them in the sauce a minute beyond this, or they will begin to shrink. Take them and the sweetbreads up, and if the sauce is too thin to bear a wineglass of cream, boil it rapidly down till _very thick_; then skim, and just before pouring over the sweetbreads stir in a wineglass of thick cream. If it goes in earlier it may curdle. It has been explained before, but I repeat it here, that there must never be too much sauce, however good, to any dish, and that the consistency is most important: it must be thick enough to mask a spoon, yet run from it freely. Nothing can be worse than a dab of white mush being served as sauce, unless it be a quantity of thin, milky soup floating on every plate. This is where the happy