However modest the dinner and however few the guests, it is always desirable to have a menu giving the detail of the repast. Let there be at least one menu for every two guests, so that all may know what joy or disappointment is held in store for them, and so that each one may reserve or indulge his appetite as his tastes and his digestive interests may dictate. Nothing is more irritating at table than a surprise of a too material nature. For instance, it is unpleasant to find that you have devoted to a simple fillet of beef the attention which you would have preferred to reserve for quails, had you known that quails were in prospect. The presentation of the menu is a pretext for a variety of table bibelots, porte-menus of ornamental silver or of porcelain, engraved cards, or cards decorated with etchings or water-colors. The designing of menu cards decorated with etchings and water-colors has been made a specialty by several Parisian artists of talent, like Henri Boulet, Mesples, Gray, and Henri Gue-rard.

Never forget that a menu is not merely a total of dishes. In an eating-house there will be found a list of dishes which the Anglo-Saxon brutally calls the "bill of fare." In a restaurant like the Cafe'Anglais there is a "carte " which forms a thick volume, and contains the enumeration of all the dishes that a cook can make; there is also a "carte du jour," which is the menu of the restaurant, the dinner of the day, with its noble order of potage, hors d'aeuvres, releves, entrees, roasts, entremets, etc.

The theory of a menu and of the composition of a dinner is simplicity itself; in general terms, it begins with an excitant, namely, soup, satisfies hunger gradually by fish, savory dishes, and roasts, with which latter a salad comes in to excite the digestion once more, and prepare the way for a vegetable, which will be followed by the dessert. In composing your menu you must consult first of all the market, and, secondly, the number of guests to be served; and, in selecting the 8 dishes, the chief things to avoid are such gross errors as the repetition of the same meats and the same sauces, or sauces of the same nature. If you serve a turbot sauce Hollandaise you must not serve after it a poulet sauce suprime, or even a blanquette de veau.

The use of French words in a menu is not indispensable. The delicate eater is not bound to know French.

Hors d'aeuvres are either cold, or, in professional language, hors d'aeuvres d'office, or warm, that is to say, hors d'ceuvres de cuisine. Formerly warm hors d'ceuvres - always without sauces - were served side by side with the entrees, only on smaller dishes. Nowadays many warm hors d'ceuvres are reckoned as entrees or light entremets, and passed round rapidly, so that they may lose none of their delicacy by standing on the table.

At dinner cold hors d'oeuvres offer but little interest to the gourmet, with the exception of the canteloupe melon and the watermelon, but especially the canteloupe, when just ripe, and with the aroma fully developed. Cut the melon immediately before serving, so that none of the perfume may evaporate; and let there be powdered sugar within the reach of those who wish it, and white pepper for the more refined palates. The can-teloupe, in my opinion, should be eaten before the soup, while the palate is absolutely fresh.

As for rosy radishes, olives, anchovies, sardines, saucisson, marinated tunny, herrings, or oysters, young artichokes a la poivrade, tongue, sprats, cucumbers, gherkins, pickled walnuts, etc., what place can such insignificant trifles claim in the menu of a serious dinner? At midday breakfast it may be amusing and appetizing to nibble at these toy dishes, but, except at the family table, it is preferable to banish cold hors d'auvres from the dinner menu.

An exquisite cold hors d'auvre are fresh figs, served at the beginning of the repast. In Southern Europe you get this hors d'au-vre in perfection. Anywhere around the Bay of Naples a dish of figs, a slice of smoked ham, and a flask of red wine make a delicious morning meal.

arm hors d'aeures, properly speaking, consist of small, dainty dishes, without sauces, such as little pasties, croustades, croquettes.

bouchees, cromesquis, tinibales, orly, or fillets of fish, coquilles of fish or fowl, rissoles, souf-fles, and delicacies served en catsses. The preparation of many warm hors d'aeuvres requires the resources of a first-rate kitchen and a professional cook; for, although they are without sauce, nevertheless they require to be artistically presented. The warm hors d'aeuvres are served after the soup or after the fish ; they ought to be pretty to look at, and to furnish two or three delicate mouth-fuls. Several such hors d'aeuvres may be served on the same dish, which makes at once a handsome arrangement to the eye and offers greater choice to the guests, while at the same time it simplifies the service.

For household cooking, however, the less said about warm hors d'aeuvres the better, for few private kitchens and few family cooks are equal to the task of preparing and serving these small dishes as they should be served. It is true you may get many of them from the neighboring pastry-cook's, but the gourmet distrusts dishes provided by pastry-cooks and caterers. Exception must, of course, be made for certain artists who have achieved fame for special things. In Paris, for instance, one of Bontoux's timbales is a dish which it is a privilege to taste, and which no private or professional cook can surpass. But, as a rule, it is well to avoid getting dishes from outside, and therefore I advise the am-phitryon to dispense as much as possible with warm hors d'aeuvres. Let them be reserved for parade dinners, where there is necessarily more show than there is delicate eating.

In the highest kind of cookery we distinguish two kinds of warm entrees; simple en-trees, which owe their value to the rareness or fineness of the component elements whose original character must be carefully preserved, and in no manner disguised by the processes of dressing; and entries travaillees, which are often less remarkable than the former, so far as concerns their component elements, but more elegant and decorative in aspect and more varied in composition. In the mounting of entrees the cook likes to show his taste in ornamentation, and often he goes beyond the mark, and awakens the distrust of the gourmet by the excess of his arabesques and combinations of line and color.

The more refined the gourmet is, and the more closely acquainted he is with the secrets of the culinary art, the stronger his preference for simple dishes, and certainly for simple entrees as compared with the entrees tra-vaillees.

With the warm entrees the real artistic interest of a fine dinner begins, for it is with the entrees that the fine sauces are served. Here it is useless to disguise the simple truth ; household cookery cannot undertake the making of the finest sauces, and therefore none but the simplest entrees can figure on the menu of a private individual who has not a first-rate kitchen and a skilled professional cook. Entrees may be cooked to a turn, tastefully mounted, and served piping hot, but, unless the accompanying sauce is perfection, these are only a delusion and a snare. Let amphitryons and cooks alike meditate the words of the wise.

"The science of sauces,' says Dubois, "does not belong to everybody and anybody, for it can only be acquired in the grand school of practice. We cannot, therefore, too strongly recommend cooks to study profoundly this part of the art.... Warm entries, by their very nature, are varied; their number is infinite; but the number of those which are suitable for a grand dinner is not so unlimited that they can be chosen at hazard. In a luxurious, rich, and elegant dinner there ought to be served none but choice entrees, carefully prepared, ornamented, garnished, representing at once, in their ensemble, wealth, skill, and competent attention. But, in order to achieve this difficult result, the cook must operate in conditions where abundance and resources are unlimited"