Aux Fruits
Let there be no mystery about these. They are little individual rice cakes, but they cannot be described, only suggested, for they are but the cook's notions, and are more than chameleon like, they change shape as well as color. They are of no consequence--only passing fancies. They are unlooked for contingencies; unexpected circumstances; dernier resorts; put in to fill up the bill, to decorate and set off the row of little dinner dishes before the guest. There are cameos and there are stage scenes laid on with a whitewash brush: both are meritorous in their place. When the cook is tired of cutting out rice or farina or tapioca cakes in squares, and dishing up charlottes with a spoon, he takes some means of giving to each person an uncut, untouched and more or less decorated trifle in symmetrical shape. The main compound for these little rice shapes is already found in the rice cake plain, preceding. A suggestion of variation is found in the rice cake with fruits. Suppose you take muffin rings, brush them inside with butter, coat them with fine grated bread crumbs, fill with rice cake, bake brown and serve a green gage plum stewed in bright syrup, or half an apricot, or three red cherries with the thick juice on top. Or, instead of rings, take some handsome stamped gem pans, the deeper and more pyramidal the better, and on the buttered sides place some shapes cut with your fancy vegetable cutters out of the greenest candied citron, or watermelon rind; or else, instead of bread crumbs, use finely chopped yolks of eggs; or, instead of any of those, make some nouilles paste--which is flour moistened with yolk of egg, with a little salt and nothing else, and worked to smoothness--and cut leaves, etc., out of that. Then place rice cake round, over the patterns--a sort of wall or casing--and inside fill with preserved fruit, jam or conserve. After baking these may be turned out, glazed with yolk of egg and milk or sugar, and quickly browned again. Sometimes little rice cakes, not sweetened, are baked in the tiniest gem pans holding scarce a tablespoonful, and are served as decorations of entrees, and with fish.