Page:Art of Cookery 1774 edition.djvu/226

188 piece of butter rolled in flour, and the juice of a Seville orange, stew them well and dish them up.

TAKE a quart of the largest oysters you can get, open them, save the liquor, and strain it through a fine sieve; wash your oysters in warm water; make a batter thus: Take two yolks of eggs, beat them well, grate in half a nutmeg, cut a little lemon-peel small, a good deal of parsley a spoonful of the juice of spinach, two spoonfuls of cream or milk, beat it up with flour to a thick batter, have ready some butter in a stew-pan, dip your oysters one by one into the batter, and have ready crumbs of bread, then roll them in it, and fry them quick and brown; some with the crumbs of bread, and some without. Take them out of the pan, and set them before the fire, then have ready a quart of chesnuts shelled and skinned, fry them in the butter; when they are enough take them up, pour the fat out of the pan, shake a little flour all over the pan, with your spoon, till it is melted and thick; then put in the oyster-liquor, three or four blades of mace, stir it round, put in a few pistachio nuts shelled, let them boil, then put in the chesnuts, and half a pint of white wine, have ready the yolks of two eggs beat up with four spoonfuls of cream; stir all well together, when it is thick and fine, lay the oysters in the dish, and pour the ragoo over them. Garnish with chesnuts and lemon.

You may ragoo muscles the same way. You may leave out the pistachio nuts, if you like them; but they give the sauce a fine flavour.

TAKE some fine white endive, three heads, lay them in salt and water two or three hours, take a hundred of asparagus, cut off the green heads, chop the rest as far as is tender small, lay it in salt and water, take a bunch of celery, wash it and scrape it clean, cut it in pieces about three inches long, put it into a sauce-pan, with a pint of water, three or four blades of mace, some whole pepper tied in a rag, let it stew till it is quite tender; then put in the asparagus, shake the sauce-pan, let it simmer till the grass is enough. Take the endive out of the water, drain it, leave one large head whole, the other leaf by leaf, put it into a stew-pan, put to it a pint of white wine; cover the pan close, let it boil till the endive is just enough, then put in a