Page:Art of Cookery 1774 edition.djvu/224

186

TAKE three lobsters, boil the largest as above, and froth it before the fire. Take the other two boiled, and butter them as in the foregoing receipt. Take the two body-shells, heat them hot, and fill them with the buttered meat. Lay the large lobster in the middle, and the two shells on each side; and the two great claws of the middle lobster at each end; and the four pieces of chines of the two lobsters broiled, and laid on each end. This, if nicely done, makes a pretty dish.

HAVING taken out the meat, and cleansed it from the skin, put it into a stew-pan, with half a pint of white wine, a little nutmeg, pepper, and salt over a slow fire. Throw in a few crumbs of bread, beat up one yolk of an egg with one spoonful of vinegar, throw it in, then shake the sauce-pan round a minute, and serve it up on a plate.

PICK out the tails, lay them by, about two quarts, take the bodies, give them a bruise, and put them into a pint of white wine, with a blade of mace. Let them stew a quarter of an hour, stir them together, and strain them; then wash out the sauce-pan, put to it the strained liquor and tails: grate a small nutmeg in, add a little salt, and a quarter of a pound of butter rolled in flour: shake it all together, cut a pretty thin toast round a quarter of a peck-loaf, toast it brown on both sides, cut into six pieces, lay it close together in the bottom of your dish, and pour your fish and sauce over it. Send it to table hot. If it be craw-fish, or prawns, garnish your dish with some of the biggest claws laid thick round. Water will do in the room of wine, only add a spoonful of vinegar.

PUT your oysters into scollop shells for that purpose, set them on your gridiron over a good clear fire; let them stew till you think your oysters are enough, then have ready some crumbs of bread rubbed in a clean napkin, fill your shells, and set them before a good fire, and baste them well with butter. Let them be of a fine brown, keeping them turning, to be brown all over alike; but a tin oven does them best before the fire. They eat