-♦- For a dinner of six.

Potage a la Gladstone.

Merlans aux fines herbes.

Tourne-dos de boeuf a la Wyvern.

Poulet a l'Americaine-Sauce aux huitres.

Rognons au surprise.

Ramequins en caisses.

Croutes d'ananas.

Fromage, hors d'oeuvres.

Dessert.

1. - This, I need scarcely say, is "oxtail soup !" Buy a shin and a half of beef, and make the best gravy you can as usual: take an oxtail, and when the shin consomme is ready early in the afternoon, (you should commence boiling the shin as soon as you can) separate the tail at the joints, and throw the pieces into your stock pot with two Bombay onions, two carrots, a stick of celery, and a muslin bag containing sweet herbs, parsley, a dozen pepper corns, and a clove of garlic; add a wine-glass of mushroom ketchup, a tea-spoonful of caramel, and simmer the soup for a couple of hours skimming it carefully. If wanted clear, all that is now needed is to strain and clarify the liquor, saving a few joints of the tail as a garnish, a table-spoonful of Madeira with a squeeze of a lime, and a pinch of sugar being added to finish with.

Oxtail soup, (clear).

If however you desire to serve a thick oxtail, go on in the following manner: - Strain the soup, saving all the tail joints, and leave it in a bowl for a while. Pick all the meat from the tail, pound it in a mortar, pass the paste through the sieve, and then skim the fat off the bowl of soup. Take a roomy sauce-pan, melt an ounce of butter at the bottom of it, stir in a table-spoonful of flour, and gradually add soup and paste till all has been expended, let the puree come to the boil (by which time it will be thick enough) ; add a dessert-spoonful of red currant jelly, a tea-spoonful of anchovy vinegar, and a glass of Madeira, stir vigorously for a minute and serve. The common way of making this soup is simply to thicken the gravy, and to throw in the joints of the tail whole. I have tried the puree, and consider the soup is vastly unproved by the pounded meat, the flavour of the oxtail being far stronger.

2. - Bake the whitings very gently, and serve them with a sauce blanche in which a bunch of parsley, minced fine, a very little shallot, a little marjoram, some garden cress, and a little green chilli (if liked) have been mixed. If fresh mushrooms happen to be available, you can make true fines herbes as follows : - equal portions (say a table-spoonful) of chopped mushroom and parsley, with a tea-spoonful of chopped shallot.

3. - Cut and trim a nice undercut of beef in slices as for grenadins: steep them all day en marinade, drain, and either grill, or fry them very carefully in clarified dripping ; drain again, and serve in a circle round a ring of mashed potato, with a heart-shaped crouton of fried bread between each slice of meat. The sauce should be composed as follows: - Melt half an ounce of butter in a small sauce-pan, mix into it half an ounce of flour; stir in, when the butter and flour have amalgamated, a breakfast-cupful of beef gravy, half a glass of sherry, a tea-spoonful of caramel, a table-spoonful of mushroom ketchup, one of Harvey, and one and a half of Anchovy sauce. Stir well, and pour piping hot into the centre of the potato ring.

Oxtail soup, (thick).

Whitings w i t h herbs sauce.

Tourne-dos of beef, Wyvern sauce.

4. - This is a capital method of cooking a fowl, the process is simply that of steaming, so you will want your fish kettle, and a pan, big enough to hold the fowl, with a close fitting lid. Truss the fowl: place a big Bombay onion inside the bird, with a couple of slices of bacon; sew up the vent, pin a strip of bacon over the breast, and set the bird in the pan (without any water or gravy round it) carefully securing the lid with paste if necessary. Immerse the vessel containing the fowl in the fish kettle or any larger pan full of cold water, and set it to boil. Cook it slowly for upwards of an hour without removing the lid which should be scrupulously kept closed. In about an hour and a quarter (after the water came to the boil), you can take the fowl out, and place it at once on a hot dish well covered up. Now strain off the gravy that you will find has been drawn from the fowl, and save it for the "oyster sauce," which make in this way as fast as you can: -

Mix an ounce of butter with an ounce of flour at the bottom of a sauce-pan, add the fowl gravy, the liquor from a tin of oysters, and the beards of the oysters cut off: (save the oysters themselves separately) throw in some pepper corns, the peel of a lime, salt to taste, and, as the mixture boils, a table-spoonful of Harvey sauce: after it has come to the boil, strain the sauce carefully, add the oysters you saved, heat it up again: take it off the fire: pour in a coffeecupful of boiling cream (or milk in which the yolk of an egg has been stirred, and heated up to the consistency of thin custard) and serve poured over the fowl. Whilst this sauce is being made, it would be wise perhaps to leave the fowl in the vessel in which it was cooked, carefully covered up and kept in the hot water bath. As soon as the sauce is ready, it can be dished up, upon a cradle of well boiled maccaroni.

Fowl in the American manner.

Oyster sauce.

5. - This is a dish of "Bombay onions stuffed with kidneys," a most excellent savoury entremets if carefully done. Take six large Bombay onions : have ready ten sheep's kidneys, scalded, and skinned, but uncooked. Boil the onions till three parts done; take them out, drain them : slice off the top of each one (as you would treat an egg) and carefully remove the inside, leaving a hollow big enough to hold two small kidneys cut into eight pieces ; take two anchovies, pick out their spines and cut the fish into little squares : have some minced parsley handy, a lime, and some of the inside of the onion that yon scooped out, minced and peppered ; put a lump of butter into the onion case first, then a little of the minced onion peppered, then your pieces of kidney, with little bits of anchovy here and there, and crown the top again with minced onion, and a pat of butter : a drop or so of lime juice should be given during the packing, and an occasional dust of spiced pepper. Now place the cap on again, and when the six onions are stuffed, lay them in a buttered baking dish, and bake in a slow oven for an hour. When done, pour a brown sauce (separately made) over them and serve in their own dish.

6. - A recipe for these toothsome little fondues will be found at page 249. Serve the moment they rise, dished upon a napkin.

Onion stuffed with kidueys.

Fondues of cheese iN paper cases.

7. - When pine-apples are in season, pray try this dish, Cut up the pine in slices a quarter of an inch thick, stew them in thin syrup, with a glass of rum, and keep them simmering en bain-marie.

Take a Madeira cake of a circular shape eight inches in diameter, cut it into nice slices the same shape as those you cut of pine-apple, lightly fry them in butter, then dust them over with powdered sugar and set them in the oven, spreading a layer of apricot jam over each slice. At the time of serving, drain the pine-apple slices, and arrange them with the slices of cake alternately upon a very hot dish, pouring the syrup over them.

This receipt can be followed exactly with American canned pine-apple slices. If the taste of rum be objected to, try brandy or any nice liqueur.

To make potato flour for souffle's.

Here is a recipe for potato flour which I do not think you will find in any cookery book. "The farina of the potato, properly granulated and dried, is frequently sold as a substitute for arrowroot," says an authority of note; "it may easily be prepared at home, and will be found useful for making puddings easy of digestion for children and invalids." If kept dry, this flour keeps well for a long time. Choose some potatoes of a good mealy kind, peel and wash them (raw), and grate them to pulp with a strong bread grater, emptying the grated stuff into a large bowl of clean spring water : stir the potato and water together briskly for a few minutes, and then let the former settle; after resting ten minutes, strain off the water: repeat the process with another basinful of water, and let it rest after stirring for ten minutes, again straining off the water; and continue the washings, so to speak, until the water remains quite clear after the sediment has settled at the bottom of the bowl: about three changes of water generally suffice for this. When satisfied that the grated potato has been thoroughly cleansed, take it out of the bowl, drain it, and spread it out upon dishes to dry and bleach in the sun, turning it frequently. When quite dry, pound it in a mortar, and pass the flour so obtained through a silk or hair sieve. Bottle it securely in dry bottles, and cork it down tightly. It will be white and quite flavourless.

Pine-apple toasts.