This section is from the book "The Epicurean", by Charles Ranhofer. Also available from Amazon: The Epicurean, a Complete Treatise of Analytical and Practical Studies on the Culinary Art.
The cantaloupe melon is certainly the finest and best; if good the fruit is a handsome orange-red, the sides very prominent, and covered with a rough exterior coat. The muskmelon outside is green, covered with a rough gray rind, the inside of a green and yellow color. To serve either one or the other, set them in a cool place for at least twelve hours before using them, have them very cold and cut either in halves or slices, and lay them on top of a grape leaf or any other kind. Do not serve the side that laid on the ground. They are eaten plain, seasoned with salt and pepper, or else sugar.
This is composed of anchovies, marinated tuna fish, cucumbers, shrimps, beets, a few olives and some red herring fillets, all cut into quarter of an inch dice. Mix all in a mayonnaise witli finely chopped tarragon, and arrange it on side dishes, garnishing with thin slices of pickled lobsters, some capers and chopped parsley.
Divide them into four parts, or else cut them up fine; they may be boiled once in boiling water, refreshed and seasoned as a salad, or eaten simply raw without blanching. If they are previously pickled in vinegar, squeeze the vinegar from them, and season them with oil, salt and pepper, surrounding the dish with small white onions.
Red and sweet peppers are plunged into hot frying fat to remove the first skin, then cut them in two to broil over a slow fire, seasoning with salt, mignonette, pepper, oil and vinegar.
Cu1 some cold cooked potatoes into three-sixteenth inch slices, also some cooked and pickled beets; take twenty rounds from each of these, using a cutter an inch and a quarter in diameter; dress them in a circle overlapping each other alternating the potatoes and beets and garnish the center with cut up chiecory, or any other cut up salad: seasoned with salt, pepper, fine herbs, oil and vinegar: cover the latter with some thick, ravigote mayonnaise (No. 612), and deco rate the top with a few anchovy fillets, tarragon leaves and chopped parsley.
Mince some onions, put them in a flat saucepan, with butter, add a bunch of parsley garnished with thyme, bay leaves, and a few cloves of garlic, fry the whole slightly in butter, add whole pepper, grated nutmeg, ground pepper, salt, moisten it with Sauterne wine, boil and let simmer during one hour; pass through a fine sieve, put this stock in a saucepan, add the salmou, cover the saucepan tightly, put in the oven for about thirty minutes, arrange them on a deep dish, pour the stock over so as the fish will be entirely covered and let it cool off.
Remove the skin covering the sausage, slice it up finely, and range it crown-shaped on a side dish with a sprig of paisley in the middle and chopped parsley around.
Cut in very thin slices, do not remove the skin. Slice Mortadella very thin and cut each round into two or four.
 
Continue to: