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Fillets of Fowl in Aspic

This way of getting the fillets ready, if not quite the best, is easier for everybody to practice than taking them off raw and braising with wine and seasonings.

Cut the breasts from 4 boiled fowls while hot, taking them off with a pointed knife close to the bone, with care not to tear or let the under fillet separate from the large one.

Dip these whole fillets in the stock they were boiled in, dredge with salt and white pepper and then press them between two dishes with a weight on top. When quite cold trim the fillets into pear shape, then with a sharp knife divide them in slices the flat way. Lay the slices in dishes and cover with clear amber jelly. When that is set cut out the fillets and jelly with a tin cutter bent to the shape. Either lay them on little dishes prepared with a bed of chopped jelly of another color, or border them with piping of chopped jelly forced through a funnel or cornet made of writing paper, and lay a slice of lemon on top.

The fact is if the most splendid feasts of ficiton have been left incomplete and spoiled for the want of salads, it is because salads are un-English and the authors are rather unfortunate than to blame. There is a remark in A History of Our Own Times to the effect that England is governed by phrases, and no phrase more powerful than to say a thing is un-English. And it has to be remembered King Richard fought Saladin in Palestine as King James fought tobacco in England, and his countrymen and their descendants have been languidly putting down salad in various ways ever since. Among all the incomplete banquets of English novelists, the man who can make a mayonaise was never so badly needed as at one in the beginning of The Cloister and the Hearth. The feast is, alas, a column long and though quite a curiosity to culinarians is too long to copy. It is Aladdin's cavern garden, with fruit of gold and silver--the Land of Cockaigne with roast pig crying, "eat me!"--the wine flowing valley of Rasselas--a Vitellius banquet--a feast of Penelope's suitors--and a Lallah Roohk's attendance all joined in one Flemish prince's festivity. Fifteen many-colored soups and as many wines. Fish in a dozen forms. Patties of lobster and almonds mixed, and of almonds and cream and an immense variety of "brouets," "known to us as rissoles." A whole hog with hair and eyes too naturally imitated with burnt sugar, an ox stuffed full of all sorts of small animals and roasted whole. Twenty different tarts of fruits and herbs. Confectionery on a gigantic scale. Hippocras and Greek and Corsican wines. But no salads! And would not twenty different kinds of salads, jardiniere, Italienne, a la Russe, and aspics have shone gorgeously amidst all that splendor? It might be contended that Flanders was not a salad-making country, but Webster's dictionary says that the word slaw is nothing but Flemish slaa, and that is only their way of pronouncing French salade; and that kohl is the German for cabbage and we call kohl cold, so that cold slaw is in reality cabbage salade, that is to say is kohl salad or