RECIPES.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume IX, Issue 15, 9 April 1892, Page 385

RECIPES.

A NEST OF EASTEB ECGS. A REALLY BEAUTIFUL AND DELICIOUS DISH. By Rebecca Cameron. The materials required are calf’s foot jelly, preserved lemon-peel, blanc-mange, and eggshells. We always made it a day or two in advance, because it is troublesome and takes time. If it is not convenient to you to get calf’s foot jelly—l will whisper that we degenerate and think gelatine jelly just as good. If you use gelatine, soak a few dried saffron leaves in the water in which you soak the gelatine, to make the jelly a bright yellow ; if you make calf's foot jelly add the saffron water to the stock when you put it on to melt. Make the blancmange as follows : Put a pint of cold water in one ounce of gelatine, and let it stand two hours. Put five ounces of sugar into a quart of sweet, fresh cream, and flavour it with two tablespoonfuls of vanilla. When the isinglass has soaked two hours take it out of the water, lay it for a moment on a clean towel, then put it in a tin cup and melt it thoroughly over boiling water, and then stir it into the sweetened cream.

Divide the mixture into three parts ; colour one part pink with raspberry jelly, or with a few grains of cochineal dissolved in alcohol ; colour another part green with spinach juice or pistache, and leave the third portion white. Of course the colours can be varied or increased to suit the individual fancy. Take as many eggs as you wish to have in your nest. A number divisible by three, allowing one for each person, and a few over for •Mr Manners.’ Wash them clean, make a hole the size of the end of a small funnel, in the side of each shell near the large end, pour out the whites into a bowl, break up the yolks with a skewer, and pour them into another bowl ; thus treated they are ready for any use desired. Wash the inside of the shells quite clean and drain them, then set them with the hole up, in a box or pan of sand, salt or sawdust, anything that will keep them firm and level. Pour each colour of blanc mange in an equal number of shells, through a funnel or from a small pitcher, and slowly so as to avoid air bubbles, and set them in acold place to harden.

To preserve the lemon peel squeeze the juice from a dozen lemons, quaiter the rinds, trim all the white out of

them, and slice them into strips as large as a straw ; boil the strips of peel in clear water until tender, then throw them into a rich syrup and boil until clear. Lay them on a sieve to drain and get cold. When ready to prepare the nest for the table, break up the jelly and pile it on a flat, round, glass dish, in the shape of a nest, by setting a deep bowl in the middle of the dish, and putting the jelly round it as high as you wish the depth of the nesu Set the dish in the cold for awhile before removing the bowl, if the jelly seems inclined M tumble into the nest.

Lay the lemon peel strips round the sides and top to imitate straws, then carefully break the shells of the blancmange eggs, and put them in the nest, with due regard to the alternations of colour. Separate nests made round a teacup, with one egg in each, and served on fancy glass plates, are pretty enough to justify the extra trouble ; and if set on an old fashioned glass waiter, each one in a little booth or bower, made of wire, wreathed with ferns, they are perfectly charming. Under any conditions of serving, however, a hen’s nest is a most beautiful dish for dessert, and appropriate to Easter symbolism.