Pie-Crust.

One cup shortening, three cups flour, little salt, rub the flour, shortening and salt all well together. Use enough cold water to hold all together, no more. Handle as little as possible. Crust for one pie:—One coffee cup flour, lard size of an egg, one fourth teaspoonful salt, water just to wet the other ingredients.

Puff Paste.

Take a pound of flour and three-quarters of a pound of butter. Chop half the butter into the flour. Beat the yolk of an egg, stir it into half a cup of ice water, and with this work the flour into a stiff dough. Roll out thin, add in bits one-third the remaining butter; fold, and roll out again, and continue till all the butter is used. Roll very thin, fold, and set in an ice-cold place for a quarter hour. Then make your crust. This paste will serve both for fruit pies and for oyster pates.

Short-Cake Paste.

Sift together two cups flour, half teaspoonful cream of tartar, and quarter teaspoonful each soda and salt, and rub in half cup of butter, keeping it as cold as possible. Stir in one cup of sweet milk to make a dough soft enough to handle Turn it on a floured board; divide the dough into halves and roll each piece out to fit a round tin plate. Bake at once, in a hot oven. When done, turn out each cake and lay it on the under side of the baking-tin With a thin, sharp knife, split the cake evenly, and lay the bottom crust on a china plate. Butter each half. Lay partly mashed, sweetened strawberries, peaches, apple-sauce, stewed rhubarb, or any hot cooked fruit suitable for pies, on the under crust, lay the upper crust over it, and serve as a pie. Powdered sugar may be sifted over the top. Serve with cream.