Cocoa Shells and Nibs

The shells and cracked cocoa may be used together or separately, and are prepared in much the same way. They may be soaked previously, but in either case require long cooking with six or eight times their bulk of water. Then strain and serve with milk and sugar.

Cocoa

Mix two tablespoons each of sugar and cocoa with a few grains of salt and a very little boiling water, add one pint of boiling water, and boil for two minutes; then combine with an equal quantity of boiling hot milk.

Chocolate.

Use from one to two ounces of chocolate for one quart. Melt the chocolate, and proceed as for cocoa.

Tea.

There are many grades of tea, the prices differing much more than with different grades of coffee; but the same general directions for making tea apply to all.

An earthen teapot or the silver tea ball in the cup are the best utensils. Fresh boiling water is essential. The process must be rapid; flavor is lost by long steeping, and boiling brings out undesirable flavors and injurious substances.

Left-over tea, if drained immediately from the leaves, may be served a second time as iced tea.

The usual proportion is one teaspoon of tea to each cup of boiling water.

Sometimes the tea is rinsed off with boiling water before it is put in the teapot.

The teapot is first scalded, the tea put in, the boiling water added, the pot covered with a "cozy," or left on the back of the stove for five minutes or less, until the leaves have absorbed water enough to settle to the bottom of the pot.

Russian Tea.

Make tea in the usual way. Put two cubes of sugar and one slice of lemon into cups. Pour on the tea and serve. Never let the tea leaves remain in the tea.

If desired cold, make the tea stronger, pour it from the grounds as soon as steeped into glasses half full of cracked ice.

Coffee

Good coffee cannot be made from an inferior grade of the coffee berry, or from any which has been ground and exposed to the air, since it loses aroma rapidly.

Few housekeepers now have coffee roasted or even ground at home.

When only one or two members of a family drink coffee it should be bought in pound or half pound lots, and be put at once into jars with close covers. The finer the coffee is ground the greater the amount of flavor extracted, but powdered coffee requires a special filtering attachment to the coffee pot.

When egg is used to settle coffee the beverage is less strong from the same quantity, but there is an added richness.

An earthen or agate ware coffee pot is preferable to a tin one, and any pot requires great care to keep it perfectly clean.

To retain all possible flavor a cork or soft paper should be put in the spout of the coffee pot while it is on the stove.

A minute quantity of salt, one saltspoon or less to one cup of dry coffee, brings out the flavor somewhat.