In nearly all recipes for the sauces of high class entrees contained in good works upon cookery, the use of butter is unsparingly advocated, and cream is also very frequently prescribed. In an early chapter of my jottings, I mentioned that I would far sooner recommend a little extra expense with regard to these items, than in the wholesale distribution of "Europe stores." I repeat the opinion emphatically now. The dinner cooked with an adequate allowance of cream and butter, requires but little aid from Messrs. Crosse and Blackwell. Unfortunately, however, for those who desire to follow this precept at Madras, our supply of milk is meagre in quality and quantity, and absurdly expensive.

The only way to obtain a little butter fit to eat, if you do not maintain a dairy of your own, is to have a cow milked at your door, and to set the milk so obtained for cream in your own larder. I have never tried to find out the exact cost of a pound of butter thus made, but, approximately speaking, it may be stated that five measures of milk at one rupee (the current rate) will not yield more than a good third of a pound, so your pound of butter will cost you nearly three rupees!* There will be a slight difference if the milk be rich; in my estimate, I speak, of course, of the average country cow's milk purchased at the door.

There is a terrible preparation which milkmen sell to our cooks under the title of "kitchen butter." To add to its attractiveness, it is generally smeared upon a leaf, and carried in the hand! It looks like the compound used for greasing the wheels of railway carriages in England, which a porter once told a friend of mine was "mostly made of ingredunts, and stuff as we makes up a'purpose" I fear that our so-called "kitchen butter" might be equally vaguely described.

* Milk has become a little cheaper since this was written, but the difficulty regarding butter and cream seems in no way removed. - W.

What, then, can people of moderate incomes do? For, I take it that even wealthy folk at home would hesitate to pay six shillings a pound for the butter used by their cooks! The most economical remedy for this evil is to use preserved butter. The "Copenhagen" (cow brand), "Normandy," and "Denmark," at one rupee fourteen annas a pound-tin, are especially free from brine, or taint of any kind, and can be thoroughly recommended. One tin, carefully used, ought to suffice for the cooking of a dinner for eight persons, (assuming even that the menu contain a full amount of dishes requiring butter in their composition) and, in my humble opinion, the result will generally be found to justify that amount of extravagance.

Before I pass from the consideration of side-dishes to that of the sauces that should accompany them, I feel it incumbent upon me to repeat that vegetables ought never to he handed round with the entrees. This quaint practice of our fore-fathers has been long since abandoned by those who give dinners of the reformed type.

The modern entree is, of course, presumed to be a plat complete in itself, and perfectly independent of other assistance. When stated in the menu, a vegetable may, of course, accompany, an entree but it should be deftly associated with the composition it accompanies, and be moulded in the same dish. A great many entrees require no vegetables. Who, for instance, could possibly eat potato and cauliflower, with a kramousky, or with a petit pate a la financiere ? The crisp batter in the former, and the pastry in the latter case, supply the necessary accompaniment of the delicate composition each contains.

Apart from its being palpably inartistic, there are other reasons which prompt the abolition of sending round vegetables with entrees. I refer to the time that is wasted in doing so, and the complication it adds to the service. Whilst the matter-of-fact objection to the practice is, that by the time they are really wanted for the joint, vegetables that have been hawked about with the entrees are certainly mangled and cold, if not wholly expended; for few people prepare relays of potatoes, etc., to follow those sent up with their side-dishes.

Lastly, let me say a few words about the garnishing and helping of entrees.

As a general rule, our native cooks, assisted I dare say by the butler, are much given to the ornamentation of their side-dishes. Now, whilst fully prepared to pander as much as possible to the "lust of the eye," I warn you to be careful lest these efforts to make things look pretty be overdone. Slices of raw cucumber should be severely interdicted, for they impart an inky flavour to the entree round which they may be trimmed; and funny devices cut out of vegetables, and dotted about a dish, should be forbidden, for they suggest to the hypercritical mind an idea that perhaps fingers have been busily employed in arranging them.

Pray do not permit your cook to garnish a croquette with a raw spring onion, - the green stem stripped and curled, and the bulb thrust into the croquette. I have actually seen this done, and once upon a time barely escaped eating the onion, which would have been a sad catastrophe, seeing that I had a most agreeable companion by my side. Let the arrangement of your entrees err on the side of simplicity rather than otherwise.

To look effective, entrees should be arranged well above the level of silver dish upon which they are served. To attain this end, the French chef prepares a socle or foundation which he makes out of a solid block of bread, or ground-rice moulded : socles for cold entrees are even sometimes made of melted wax candle consolidated with bees' wax. A flat socle for ordinary hot entrees is easily made with rice, which should be boiled, pounded, and then moulded with a wooden spoon into an oval or round block according to the shape of the dish. When moulded, it should be brushed over with egg and colored in the oven. For cold entrees, spread the block over with fresh butter. Having thus obtained a firm foundation, the entree itself becomes, as it were, a superstructure erected upon the socle. Nothing looks more slovenly than an entree arranged on the level of the dish itself.

Dishes that require careful helping ought certainly never to be handed round at a dinner party. I have observed that ladies frequently refuse an entree on account of the difficulty of helping themselves. A fair patroness of mine whose menage is worthy of her artistic skill, tells me that she has made up her mind (and rightly, say I,) never to permit her admirable mayonnaise a la Gouffe to be handed round to her guests again. One person, she says, would take a little of the aspic, the next some of the salad, the third - engaged, perhaps, in pleasant chatter, with a pair of bright eyes full upon him - might absently secure a fragment of the garnish! and so on, all in heart-rending ignorance of the science and care bestowed upon the dish.

In any circumstances I strongly recommend that all iced entrees be helped from the side table, with a portion of the sauce upon each plate, and passed round to your guests without delay. For, in a climate as warm as this, speedy helping at the side table will prevent the possible contingency of liquefaction. Indeed all entrees might be thus served with manifest advantage. The menu card in front of you tells you what is coming, and in this way you would be spared, at all events, the unpleasantness of having a hot silver dish with its savoury contents thrust in between you and the lady you have taken in to dinner; conversation would never be annoyingly interrupted; pretty costumes and dress coats would be less liable to be baptized with hot gravy, whilst much valuable time would be saved.