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Aspic of Shbimps or Prawns

Good aspic or savory jelly is a really pleasant condiment with shrimps and the like as well as very pretty ornament, but someone remarks in a commonsense way that it ought to be fish jelly instead of meat jelly. 1. Pick a quart of shrimps and keep the largest and shapliest for this purpose, laying aside the broken pieces for fish sauce, etc. Shake up the shrimps in oil and vinegar enough to make them shine. Chop some bright amber-colored jelly. Slice extremely fine, or chop-only just before it is to be used-some green lettuce, cress and mustard, or celery with half green tops, as may be convenient, and season with oil, vinegar and salt. Put a spoonful of the green salad in each small dish and form a border with it. In the middle place a spoonful of the chopped jelly well spread out, and on that, well in the center, not to hide the border of jelly, place a spoonful of shrimps. Take up a little more of the chopped jelly on a silver fork and striking dredge it all over the dish. 2. Melt some jelly and add to it a flavoring of pepper sauce, Halford sauce (poured off clear without dregs) and one drop of red coloring. Spread the shrimps close together and only two deep on the largest sized meat platter, pour enough of the jelly over just to cement the shrimps together and set the dish in the refrigerator to get cold.

When to be dished up cut the shrimps in jelly in cakes, either with a sharp knife in oblongs, triangles, squares, or diamonds, leaving no residue, or with a round or oval cutter.

Dish up in combination with a green salad border. One oblong cake on a bed of cress. Two small triangles set up against a pile of salad in the middle. 3. The last is one of the speedy if somewhat rough-and-ready ways that are always practicable, while this takes time.

Prepare a small bowl of chopped green lettuce, about a pint may do, and moisten it with some salad dressing.

Pour a spoonful of flavored jelly in each one of about 25 slender conical shaped wine glasses, or moulds like them, let it run all around to coat the sides, stick the shrimps in order upon the jelly, and let it set in a cold place. When about two rows have been put in place, put a teaspoonful of the chopped lettuce in the cavity, and the shrimps dipped in jelly, on the point of a fork, can be placed in the upper rows easily. Fill up with the prepared lettuce and pour a spoonful of jelly on top of that and be sure the moulds stand level while the jelly is setting. The moulds or glasses have to be placed in ice water when the weather is not cold.

To dish up, dip the mould a moment in warm water, wipe the outside and shake the shape of jellied shrimps out onto a bed of cress in its dish. Stick a plume of fennel or a flower in the top of the cone. 4. The stamping works now turn out a great variety of fancy shapes of gem pans, some in form of scallop shells, that are well adapted for moulding these individual aspics in, and are less troublesome than border moulds. There is no good reason why this day's dinner should be just like any other day's dinner in these little ornamental accessories.