Some of these entrées will be more suited for breakfast, luncheon, or supper dishes than to precede a heavy dinner, such, for instance, as the preparations of oysters when they have been also served before soup; but the recipes are included here for their intrinsic worth.
_Fillets of Cod à la Normande._--Butter a tin dish, lay on it three slices of cod moderately thick (an inch to an inch and a half), pour over them one wineglass of white wine, place a buttered paper over them, and bake in a moderate oven fifteen minutes. Reduce another glass of wine in a stewpan by simmering, add to it half a pint of white sauce, twelve small oysters, bearded and blanched, twelve small quenelles,[62-*] and twelve button mushrooms. Season with pepper and salt. Simmer one minute only, or the oysters will harden. Place the slices of fish on a hot dish, pour the sauce over them, place the oysters, mushrooms, and quenelles in groups in the corners of the dish.
_Lobster Soufflées._--Cut up the meat of a boiled hen lobster into neat dice, showing as much of the red as possible. Prepare as many small ramekin or soufflée cases as may be required by pinning bands of writing-paper round them two to three inches higher than the case. Take three tablespoonfuls of mayonnaise, half a pint of stiff aspic jelly, and a gill of tomato sauce in which a teaspoonful of gelatine has been dissolved. Every utensil used must be ice-cold, the jelly must be quite cold, but not set. Put the tomato sauce, the jelly, and the mayonnaise (which should be left on the ice till the last thing) into a bowl set in another bowl of pounded ice; whisk them together until they begin to look white; then stir the lobster in it, with a teaspoonful of very finely chopped chervil and tarragon; fill the soufflée cases, piling the dressing high; put them on a dish on ice. When they are "set," carefully remove the paper bands, sprinkle a little dried and sifted lobster coral over the tops, and serve.
_Coquilles of Prawns._--Pick the shells from four dozen prawns; mix with one third the quantity of mushrooms slightly stewed in a tablespoonful of butter and a saltspoonful of salt (the mushrooms must not be brown); add four tablespoonfuls of Allemande sauce;[64-*] fill the shells, which must be well buttered, dress each over with fine bread crumbs which have been carefully fried a golden brown; put them in a cool oven twenty minutes, only get thoroughly hot, but not to cook.