For a little home dinner.

Puree de rognons.

Ecrevisse de mer au gratin.

"Bifteck" a la jardiniere.

Pommes de terre a la duchesse.

Beignetfi d'aubergines, "Pudding" a la "Sir Watkin." Fromage, hors d'ocuvres Dessert.

1. - Take your daily allowance of soup meat as usual and make a strong consomme with it. Buy six mutton kidneys and treat them as follows: - Wash them, dry them, slit them in halves, and plunge them immediately into boiling water well salted ; let them remain in this bath for one minute only, take them out, and dry them in a napkin. This is an infallible recipe for the removal of that peculiar taste which many people dislike in kidneys; it should be followed always, no matter how you intend to cook them. Well, having thus blanched the kidneys, proceed to boil them gently with some dried thyme, marjoram, and a bag containing spice, etc, till they are very tender. Take them out, and pound them in the mortar, with one well washed anchovy : when sufficiently pounded, pass the paste through a wire sieve to get rid of fibre, gristle, etc. When ready, place the consomme in a bowl handy, and keep the kidney paste ready in a soup plate. Take a roomy sauce-pan, melt an ounce of butter at the bottom of it over the fire, stir in a table-spoonful of flour; when nice and creamy, add a cupful of consomme, stirring vigorously, and continue to add consomme and kidney paste by degrees, working them well together, till you have used them up; now let the puree come to the boil; add a glass of port, a tea-spoonful of red currant jelly, a tea-spoonful of good vinegar, and sufficient caramel coloring to give the soup a warm brown tint, stir well for a minute over the fire, and serve with croutons of fried bread.

Kidney puree.

A coffee-cupful of boiling cream, or a coffee-cupful of milk in which the yolk of an egg has been stirred, may be added to this soup off the fire for additional richness. It will be found so like a game soup that many will doubt its having any connection with kidneys. After a day's hard work, a rich sustaining soup of this kind is often very acceptable.

2. - Choose a nice crab, have it boiled, cleaned, and picked : place the meat in a soup plate, and give it a dust of black pepper. Boil till tender sufficient maccaroni to line the bottom of a small pie-dish, and grate a tea-cupful of mild cheese. Now rub the bottom of the pie-dish with butter, place the maccaroni thereon, and pour a coffee-cupful of well made white sauce over the maccaroni. Shake a dust of grated cheese over its surface. Next place the crab meat, well worked with melted butter, over the maccaroni, and, as you arrange it, dust it with black pepper. Over the crab dredge a nice dressing of the grated cheese, about one-eighth of an inch deep, and pour a little melted butter over the surface. Bake till the top takes colour, and serve. No sauce is necessary with this, but if you like, you can send round a sauce piquante, or any plain sharp relish of that class.

Baked crab.

3. - Vegetables are sometimes scarce at Madras, when our variety for this dish may be somewhat meagre; but we can always get delicious Bombay onions, fair French beans, and carrots. Turnips taste too strong late in the season, so I would not advise your using them then. Choose a nice steak, fry it. to begin with in butter till it turns a nice brown colour on both sides, then put it into your stew-pan, with half a pint of water, (or broth) one Bombay onion cut into quarters, a good handful of French beans, a plant of celery and two carrots sliced, a table-spoonful of walnut ketchup, a salt-spoonful of sugar, a glass of Marsala, pepper, and salt. Cover the pan, and stew the steak ever so gently till the meat parts easily when tested by the fork. Then lift it out, strain the gravy, place the steak on a hot silver dish, arrange the vegetables cut up into very small dice tastefully over it, thicken the gravy with a little butter and flour, add a dessert-spoonful of Marsala, and pour it boiling hot over the steak.

4. - With the above, try your potatoes in this way : mash them up with a little good milk, butter, and the yolks of two eggs; add pepper, salt, some grated nutmeg, and some parsley, or celery leaves chopped fine (a few marjoram leaves are an improvement). Roll the mixture into balls the size of a pippin, brush them over with a beaten egg, set them on a buttered tin, and bake for a few minutes till they turn a golden yellow colour. They look pretty, and taste nice.

They may also be formed somewhat smaller, the size of racquet balls, and fried a golden brown in melted butter.

5. - This is the American method of serving egg-plant, and is a very good dish for a change. Parboil some young brinjals in salt and water, let them get cold, and slice them in longitudinal pieces of a convenient size and thickness for fritters - two inches long, and a quarter of an inch thick. Pick out the seeds. Prepare the batter I have previously described, dipping the pieces of brinjal in it, and frying them a crisp golden yellow in abundance of fat. Drain them quite dry, dust a little salt over them, and serve them with "Dutch sauce" (q. v. page 89).

Beefsteak stewed with vegetables.

Potato duchesses.

Brinjal fritters.

6. - Mix together in a bowl two ounces of chopped candied peel, four ounces of suet finely minced, four ounces fine white crumbs, one table-spoonful of flour, three ounces of sugar, two ounces of apricot jam, a liqueur-glass of curacoa, one dessert-spoonful of milk, and four fresh eggs. When thoroughly mixed, put the ingredients into a buttered mould, and steam for three hours.

Apricot sauce should accompany the pudding, made as follows: - Put half a pot of apricot jam into a sauce-pan with half a pint of water, and a glass of brown sherry or Madeira; boil together, stirring well, then strain, and serve.

Maccaroni au gratin-

Many fail to hit off this homely dish as nicely as they could wish. The following is a simple recipe: -

Take two ounces of maccaroni, throw it into boilino-water, with a salt-spoonful of salt, and a pinch of pepper, boil, and as soon as tender, drain it well; put into a saucepan one ounce of butter, mix it well with one table-spoonful of flour, moisten with four table-spoonfuls of gravy (saved from the soup gravy), and a coffee-cupful of cream, or milk enriched with the yolk of an egg; add two ounces of grated cheese, one table-spoonful of mustard, salt and pepper to taste : place the maccaroni in a shallow well buttered pie-dish, by degrees pouring your mixture, made as above, amongst it; dust a thick layer of grated cheese over the surface, and as soon as it browns nicely in the oven, send it to table. Maccaroni au gratin should be quite moist, and thoroughly impregnated with the flavour of cheese: the presence of mustard should also be perceptible.

Sir Watkin's pudding.

Chaud-froid de filets de foie gras

This is a very nice cold entree. Open a tin of foie gras, and slice it very carefully in slices about half an inch thick; out of these slices trim some nicely shaped fillets, Cashmecr shawl patterns, or ovals. Put them on a flat dish, and mask them with chicken chaud-froid glaze. When the glaze has set, trim each fillet neatly, and set them in a circle with their masked sides outwards upon a socle of ground rice which should be spread with butter for them to adhere to it. Points d'asperges, flageolets, or a macedoine, moistened with pure cream, should fill the centre of the circle. Serve very cold.