Patterns On Tinfoil

Tinfoil paper such as tobacco and similar merchandise is wrapped in can be used instead of the waxed paper recommended in foregoing directions. Lay a covering of tinfoil on the outside of a bowl turned upside down, lay a piping pattern on it for a basket or other object; let it dry and turn right side up and after removing gently from the bowl the tinfoil can be carefully picked away as the icing does not adhere to it. The learner can practice both ways and decide for himself which he has most success with.

Raised Border Ornaments

Palisade or garden fence patterns of icing to set around a cake can be made as directed for the bowed basket handles. Make a hoop of tin and wax it with mixed wax and mutton fat, set it on a board and make the pattern upon it in panels or pieces divided at convenient distances. When dry take off the pieces by warming the tin, and set the border around the edge of the cake. The tin hoop must of course be made to fit the cake.

Another way requiring more practice and a steady hand is to take a cake already iced over and quite dry, turn it upside down upon something like a gallon tomato can, then with your piping tube hang a loop or fringe border all round the edge. Dry that and then put on another row of loop border, and continue till you have four or five tiers. Let it get perfectly dry and then turn the cake right side up and if you have no accident you have a raised lace-work border around the cake which raises a wonder as to how it was done.

Pyramids of Small Cakes.

Height 20 to 24 inches.

Have a tin shape made like that on the left, with a wired rim on the bottom to keep it firm and several tin circles also rimmed to keep them from yielding and breaking the pyramid, and have them large enough to lift easily without binding on the shape. Cover the tin circle on the edge with a lace cake paper and slip over the top. Grease the pyramid shape and then build up lady fingers, almond fingers, meringues, cocoanut caramels or anything of the sort by dipping the edges in melted clear candy, or in cake icing. When set lift the pyramid off the shape, still resting on the tin ring and place it on a cake stand. The most beautiful object of this sort is a pyramid of kiss meringues perfectly made, and covered with a veil of spun sugar.

Another Exhibition.

The London managers while yet sore over the unsatisfactory results of this one are asking each other if there shall be another and they are disposed to answer yes. However that may come out there will probably be such an exhibition opened in the United States and it will be successful for it will be arranged and carried out by hotel-keeping men for the furtherance of hotel - keeping interests.

There are two distinct classes of cooks and two different lines of cooking, they are the chefs who cook for my lord the Marquis of Carrabas and his noble compeers on the one side, and the chefs who manage large kitchens and numerous subordinates and who count the meals they send out by the thousands a day on the other, and the American Cookery Exhibition will regard the latter class and their work as the matter of greatest public interest and will stimulate them to seek methods of greater variety and perfection in serving the complete individual dinners of the modern hotel and restaurant system. There were ideas in the London exhibition which will perhaps have to be brought over to this side for development. There was the national dinner idea but too pinched and narrow; the prize table setting, but on a private house basis; the prize napkin-folding, but no waiter's drill nor prize waiter work; there were little dishes made by amateur cooks, but no contests of veterans of the table d'hote system; there were two days of fitful interest over a display of ornamental pieces which resulted in dissatisfaction over the awards of prizes and while even this was being but poorly attended there were a thousand "temperance lunch houses," "coffee taverns,"

"oyster houses," "railway eating stations," "chop houses," restaurants and hotels of every description where the real cookery exhibitions were going on and in which the public were really interested which had no more part nor lot in the Aquarium exhibition than if it had been in some distant country. They are all interested in the art of cooking for large numbers but not in pieces montees. There was one good idea of a hotel cook who entered for exhibition three sauces, but little known; that idea will be amplified in the American exhibition into a show and sampling of all known sauces. There will be a display, for prizes, of the best ways the best cooks have invented of ornamenting the individual dishes of each separate hotel dinner; there will be prizes for the best ten ways of cooking certain specified articles of diet and the requirement of the proper name attached to every dish. There will be exhibitions of rapid waiter-work given at dinners served to members at nominal prices for this purpose, and the specially ornamental cooks who set out very grand banquet tables but never succeed in getting their patrons half waited upon, will have the opportunity to look on and learn how meals are served to hundreds or thousands at once.

The End.

Suggestions for the Decoration of Small Dishes.

For Restaurant Orders and Course Dinners.

Cases (caisses) of various shapes can be made by a simple method similar to that of making a kind of crisp waffle. It is well enough to have the iron or copper shapes but they are not indispensable. Take common tin patty-pans, mix up a pancake batter or the same as used for pineapple fritters, that is rather thin; even flour batter-cake will do. Make some lard hot, dip the pattypans in, then dip the outsides in the batter, drop into the lard and fry slowly. Soon the batter becomes dry and crisp like a shell. Pull it off, drain on paper, dip the pattypans again until you have enough. Use these shells or cases instead of puff-paste patties to fill with stewed terrapin or scrambled brains, ragout of chicken liver, etc. Very small ones as thin as paper can be used to set around a dish, some filled with grated horseradish, others withmaitre d' hotel butter, with peas or asparagus points. Other shells or cases are made by shaping rice croquettes or potato croquettes in any desired form, egging and breading them either once or twice and frying as usual. When done of a handsome clear brown color cut out the top and re-move the inside and fill up with minced chicken, minced kidneys, any curry mixture or ragout, giblets,, sweetbreads or brains.

Another resource for small ornamental dishes is the carving of raw potatoes, sweet potatoes and turnips into shapes like cups or tumblers, fry them slowly in lard or oil enough to cover them till done, drain on paper, sprinkle with salt and use them in the ways above described.

Similar shapes may be cut out of bread and fried in the same way.

The common method of ornamenting a spoonful of meat and sauce in an individual dish with a heart-shaped or leaf-shaped crouton of fried bread is good with the exception of being too common. The common fault is to cut the shapes too large and out of bread sliced too thick. They should be dipped sometimes in bright sauce and parsley-dust and be set up leaning against the meat as well as bordering the dish.

Similar thin pieces of fried bread may be set up on end around a dish, fastened by being dipped in egg and placed while the dish is hot; the meat is then to be dished in the middle. A very handsome border can be made of duchesse potato mixture or balls set around, carefully egged over and the top slightly baked by setting on the top shelf.

Another is made by making a firm puree by rubbing green peas through a sieve. Dip a teaspoon in hot butter and with it dip up small egg-shapes and place in order around the dish. Lemons to go with salmon steak or fried oysters may be cut in basket shapes with scolloped edges. Beets may be stamped out with fancy cutters. There should not be too much crowding. One of the most effective ornaments for a salad is a strip or two of blood beet in vinegar cut with a scollop potato knife, small, like a common lead pencil in size, but serrated, and laid on top of the salad.

A little ornamental effect can be given to all the ordinary individual dishes at dinner by placing the meats diagonally in the dish; the rice may be placed slanting across one side and end of a dish and the curry in the same lengthened form in the remaining space just as well as shapelessly bunched up at each end or mixed, and the green peas with a croquette may as well lie in two diagonal lines alongside of it as to be in a promis-cous pile. Don't try too many experiments. One new wrinkle a week is enough. But remember that some big reputations and big salaries are made through the assiduous following up of all the advantages afforded by a cultivated taste for ornamentation rather than from any real difference in the cooking that is behind it all.

An Elaborate Dish. (From the London Caterer.)

At the late Cookery Exhibition in Paris the highest award was obtained by M. Charles Poulain for his Bour-riche de Gibier a PIndienne (Basket of Game). We present an illustration, and append some brief descriptive notes of this highly artistic piece montee.

The stand was made of mutton fat, and covered with a mosaic-work composed of diamonds of truffles, tongue, and boiled white of egg. The basket, or bourriche, was made of wax, as were also the four modelled Indian figures supporting: the edifice. The projecting flowers were likewise modelled in wax of various colors. The contents of the basket consisted of galantines of pheasants, and ballottines of partridges and quails. These were dished upright, and surmounted by the heads and feathers of the birds. A small silver skewer passing through each bird's head fixed it to the galantine. In the middle of the group rose a high wax vase containing a bouquet of vegetables cut in the shape of different flowers. The hollows between the galantines were filled with aspic jelly.

Trophy of Galantines of Partridges.

This was the work of a French chef in London of which the picture only and no particulars were given.

Evidently the stand itself is of silver, one of those pieces of "massive family plate" so often mentioned in relation to old and titled families. The cook's work is the four boned partridges finely decorated, the elaborate raised foundation on which they stand, with the borders of aspic and truffles; the truffles, probably, in the two raised baskets at the sides, the waxen bird and basket at top, the waxen figure of the cook himself and his benign angel at the bottom, very likely with a white vax floor and decorations to stand upon.