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Brussels Sprouts
Choux de Bruxelles à la Maître d'hôtel are boiled, and served in Maître d'hôtel sauce. Sautés, they are sauté in butter with lemon, etc. À la Française, they are dressed with alternate layers of a white sauce with cream and grated cheese, covered with breadcrumbs and hardboiled yolk of egg, and garnished with croûtons. CABBAGE.
Choux farcis-the heart is cut out, and a stuffing of sausage-meat, etc., put between each leaf; it is braised, and served in the sauce. en surprise the heart cut out, it is filled with sausage-meat and boiled chestnuts, and stewed.
CARDOONS.
Boiled cardoons are served au velouté-in white sauce; à l'Espagnole in brown sauce; or au gratin -covered with breadcrumbs, sprinkled with melted butter, and browned. If grated cheese is mixed with the breadcrumbs, they are called à l'Italienne. Cardons au jus are stewed, and served in brown sauce with beef marrow. Garnished with pieces of toast spread with beef marrow, they they are called à la moëlle.
A purée of cardoons with cream, etc., garnished with croûtons, is served as Purée de cardons aux croûtons.
CARROTS.
Boiled and cut in shapes, carrots are served as- Carottes à la Béchamel, in Béchamel sauce, garnished with croûtons; or à la pouletteglazed, and served in Poulette sauce. à la Flamande are served in a tomato sauce, garnished with pieces of cooked tomatoes on croûtons. à la ménagère are cut in slices and served in a white sauce with wine, herbs, etc. aux petits pois-cut in dice and served with peas in a white sauce. au sucre-mashed, and dressed with milk, sugar, eggs, etc., the top sprinkled with sugar. à l'Indienne-served in a curry sauce with a border of rice. à la Malden are stewed, and served in a vol-auvent with slices of beef marrow, capers, and a rich brown sauce.
Young carrots stewed in white sauce are called Petites carottes, or Carottes nouvelles, à la sauce blanche.
Stewed and glazed, they are glacées; or à l'Allemande, served with Allemande, or brown sauce. CAULIFLOWERS.
Chouxfleurs au gratin are masked with a white
This is not a recipe page. It is a page from a dictionary, and the thing being defined is a name — what a cook has done to a vegetable, and therefore what the menu card is allowed to call it.
- The sauce names the dishSprouts boiled and sent up in maître d’hôtel sauce are Choux de Bruxelles à la Maître d’hôtel. The same sprouts in butter and lemon are Sautés. Nothing about the vegetable changes; the name follows whatever goes over it. Read every entry on this page that way and it stops looking like a list of recipes and starts looking like a key.
- Nine carrots, one carrotBoiled carrots appear here under nine names, and the difference between them is Béchamel, Poulette, tomato, white wine and herbs, peas, milk and sugar, curry, or a vol-au-vent with beef marrow. If you are cooking from this, the only decision is the finish.
- CardoonsGrown for the thick leaf stalks rather than the head, a relative of the globe artichoke, and now hard to find outside Italian and French greengrocers in winter. If you cannot get them, the entries still tell you something useful: au gratin, au velouté, à la moëlle are treatments for any long, mild, slightly bitter rib, and a bunch of chard stems or celery hearts will take all three.
- Beef marrow was an ordinary garnishÀ la moëlle means with marrow, and Carottes à la Malden puts slices of it in a vol-au-vent. Marrow now arrives as bones, which a butcher will split lengthwise for you; it is roasted and spooned out, and it behaves like a very rich butter.
- Croûtons here are structuralThrough this whole book croûtons are shaped pieces of fried bread used to border a dish, prop up a garnish, or hold a smear of marrow. They are architecture, not a salad topping, and they need to be cut to a size and fried evenly.
- Hard yolk as a finishChoux de Bruxelles à la Française is layered with cream sauce and cheese, crumbed, and topped with hard-boiled yolk of egg. The sieved or grated hard yolk strewn over a gratin is one of the few finishes on these pages that has genuinely disappeared. It is worth reviving: it is dry, mild and it catches the light.
The page tells you how a household was divided. The cook already knew how to boil a sprout and make a white sauce, which is why no quantity and no time appears anywhere here. What the employer needed was the French name, the assurance that such a dish existed, and a sentence describing what would arrive at the table. This book sits on the dining-room side of that line, not the kitchen side — it is written for the person holding the menu card, not the person holding the pan.