How To Keep Recipes

The usual way of keeping recipes on files dated with the year is a good one; but a friend has made (for the Editor) a very neat and ingenious case of brown holland, which hangs inside the store-room, or closet door, and holds the recipes separately. It is about a yard square of holland, on which pockets are stitched in rows - i.e. a long strip is stitched on the foundation by the bottom line and then divided into pockets. On each is marked the purpose for which it is designed - i.e. rent, taxes and rates, gas, water, butcher, grocer, baker, milk, etc. etc. The whole is neatly bound with ribbon or coloured tape, and is most convenient, as a receipt can be found in it in a moment.

The Breakfast Table

A bright-looking breakfast-table is a cheerful welcome to a new day, and the housewife should be careful that it may offer nothing to the sight and taste but pleasing objects. In this volume will be seen a picture of a well-laid breakfast-table.

1. Brawn.

2. Mustard & Cress & Radishes.

3. Bread.

4. Hot Rolls.

5. Oysters & Bacon.

6. Kidneys.

7. Eggs.

8. Butter.

It will be seen that at the head of the table are the breakfast cups ana saucers, the tea-cups to the left, the coffee-cups on the righthand side. The teapot and coffee-pot stand in front of the urn; slop-basin and milk-jug to the left; cream and hot milk to the right. Hotplates should come in with hot dishes; a plate, knife and fork should be set for each person. Bread should be on a wooden platter. Hot rolls should be covered with a napkin. Dry toast and hot toast must only be sent in when the breakfast party are seated, as they are spoiled by keeping.

The tablecloth should be spotlessly white and smooth, the plate brightly cleaned, the china pretty, the food well cooked - tea, coffee, chocolate well made. An appetizing breakfast is a great promoter of health and good temper. A soiled cloth, tough toast, blackened and half-dressed chops, weak or cold tea, are real trials to temper when encountered at the beginning of the day. Flowers on the breakfast-table are imperative where they are not impossible.

"Set flowers on your table," says Leigh Hunt, "a whole nosegay it you can get it - or but two or three - or a single flower - a rose, a pink; nay, a daisy. Bring a few daisies and buttercups from your last field-walk, and keep them alive in a little water; ay, preserve but a branch of clover, or a handful of flowering grass, one of the most elegant as well as cheap of Nature's productions, and you have something on your table that reminds you of the beauties of God's creation, and gives you a link with the poets and sages that have done it most honour. Put but a rose, or a lily, or a violet on your table, and you and Lord Bacon have a custom in common; for that great and wise man was in the habit of having the flowers in season set upon his table - morning, we believe, noon, and night; that is to say, at all his meals; for dinner, in his time, was taken at noon; and why should he not have flowers at all his meals, seeing that they were growing all day? Now here is a fashion that shall last you for ever, if you please, never changing with silks and velvets and silver forks, nor dependent upon the caprice of some fine gentleman or lady, who have nothing but caprice and change to give them importance and a sensation.

The fashion of the garments of heaven and earth endures for ever, and you may adorn your table with specimens of their drapery, with flowers out of the fields, and golden beams out of the blue ether. Flowers on a morning table are specially suitable to the time. They look like the happy wakening of the Creation; they bring the perfumes of the breath of Nature into your room; they seem the representations and embodiments of the very smiles of your home, the graces of its good-morrow, proofs that some intellectual beauty is in ourselves, or those about us, some house Aurora (if we are so lucky as to have such a companion) helping to strew our life with sweets, or in ourselves some masculine mildness not unworthy to possess such a companion, or unlikely to gain her".

Breakfast dishes are of themselves pre:ty and taking to the eye. Eggs in their stands or in baskets lined with moss, as Plover eggs are served, are beautiful in form and colour; honeycomb, radishes and mustard and cress, are all lovely patches of colour on a white ground.

Chops are not very well fitted for adornment, but brawn and ham are picturesque if adorned with plenty of parsley.

Then twice-dressed meat or fish may appear in scallop shells, which placed on a white napkin look very pretty; and no dish looks better than lobster cutlets. We suggest also that the breakfast-room should face the east to receive the early sunshine.

On the sideboard should be placed cold joints of all kinds - they rather encumber a breakfast table, therefore custom and good taste require a cloth over the sideboard or a side-table for them. Here also must be put whatever other superfluous food cannot find a place on the table. The breakfast table will always be the criterion of the style of the house and of the taste of its mistress.

We subjoin a list of a few breakfast dishes for selection: -