Egg Plant
Aubergines farcies are cut in halves, the centres chopped, and put back into the skins with oil, brown sauce, etc.; sprinkled with breadcrumbs and browned.
ENDIVE.
Chicorée au jus is stewed in stock. à la crème is chopped, and dressed with cream, white sauce, etc.; garnished with croûtons.
Garnished with slices of hard-boiled eggs, it is à la Théodora. If the cream is omitted, it should be called en purée.
LEEKS.
Poireaux au jus are stewed in stock. à la Mediterranée are braised, stuffed with sausagemeat, breadcrumbed and fried, and served with slices of cooked tomatoes.
LENTILS.
A purée of lentils with stock, garnished with croûtons, is served as Purée de lentilles aux croûtons. Boiled and served in white sauce, they are en fricassée.
LETTUCE.
Lettuce is served au jus, stewed; or as Laitues farcies, the centres cut out, filled with forcemeat and braised.
MORELS.
Morilles aux croûtons are stewed and served on buttered toast.
Morilles à l'Italienne are served in Italian sauce. à l'Andalouse are cooked with oil, wine, ham, etc., and served in the sauce.
MUSHROOMS.
Champignons à la sauce are stewed, and served in white sauce. à la Superlative are laid on pieces of toast spread with Devonshire cream, and the cream piled on the top; and are cooked in a covered dish. à la Milanaise are seasoned with oil and vinegar, dipped in beaten eggs with grated cheese, and fried. à la Bordelaise are soaked in oil, broiled, and served in the oil with chopped parsley, etc. farcis or au gratin are filled with stuffing, sprinkled with breadcrumbs and baked. They may be served with brown sauce. à la Napolitaine-filled with a stuffing made of the stalks with herbs, breadcrumbs and grated cheese; baked, and served with gravy.
For Croûtes aux champignons they are broiled and served on toast.
En fritot, or as Beignets de champignons, they are fried in batter with slices of bacon.
Cut in slices, they are dressed en ragoût-with broth, chopped parsley, etc.; or à la crème-with butter, cream, etc.
For Purée de champignons they are chopped, and served with butter, gravy, etc., garnished with croûtons. 1
The title is a running head, not a subject: the page opens on one line about aubergines and then runs straight through endive, leeks, lentils, lettuce, morels and mushrooms. It is the vegetable section of a menu dictionary.
- Not a side dishEvery entry here is a dish in its own right, with its own sauce, served as a course. A reader looking for something to put next to the meat will find vegetables stewed in stock, bound with cream, stuffed with forcemeat and browned under crumbs — treatments now reserved for the main event.
- ChicoréeThe page gives only the French word, and English and French usage for endive and chicory have been crossed for so long that this line cannot tell you which plant is meant: the curly-leaved sort sold as frisée, or the pale forced head. If you are cooking it, the curly sort is the one that takes stewing.
- Lettuce as a cooked vegetableLaitues farcies — lettuce with the heart cut out, filled with forcemeat and braised — is the strangest line here to a modern eye and the most reliably good. Cos or little gem stand up to it; a soft round lettuce collapses.
- MorelsMorels are wild, expensive and sold dried far more often than fresh. Every treatment on this page cooks them thoroughly, which is the right way round: this is not a mushroom to eat raw or barely warmed.
- Which creamThe Devonshire cream in the Superlative mushrooms is clotted cream, thick enough to pile on the cap and stay there; double cream slides off. The dish is cooked covered, so the cap steams in its own liquor.
- CroûtonsThroughout the page these are shapes cut from bread and fried in butter or dripping, used as a border or a base. They are a structural element, not the dried cubes now sold for salads.
Read as an inventory, the page describes a garden and a wood rather than a shop: morels here, sea-kale and salsify elsewhere in the same chapter, and mushrooms given more lines than everything else put together. The French labels do the familiar work of dressing plain produce for a formal card — à la Théodora is endive with slices of hard-boiled egg laid on it — but the book is also unusually strict about the words. It tells you that if the cream is left out of the endive you must stop calling it à la crème and call it en purée instead. That instruction is addressed to the person writing the menu card, not the person at the stove, and it is the clearest sign of who the book was for.