Fish must always be put into cold court-bouillon.

The court-bouillon may be prepared beforehand, and cooled down before the fish is put in; the court-bouillon may also be kept and used several times, provided it be reboiled every three or four days, a little water being added each time to supply loss by evaporation.

Naturally a court-bouillon prepared beforehand will savor more strongly of the aromatic ingredients in it than a new court-bouillon.

If wine is abundant, of course it may be substituted for water almost entirely.

Remark that in countries where wine is not commonly used for kitchen purposes the court-bouillon may be made quite satisfactorily with vinegar and lemons. Even in France many an economical housekeeper will not sacrifice a bottle of white wine to boil a fish. With wine, of course, the result is more delicate and richer. But wine is not absolutely necessary for success.

Both fresh-water and sea fish may be advantageously cooked in court-bouillon, with the exception, of course, of such fine kinds as the lordly turbot.

For a fish like pike, for instance, you can heighten the flavor of the court-bouillon by the addition of a little ginger and a few cloves; some cooks even add garlic, but to my mind garlic is too acrid a condiment to be used in cooking any kind of fish. I do not guarantee that pike cooked thus is equal to a pike roasted according to the directions given by Izaak Walton, which is, as he says, "a dish of meat too. good for any but anglers or very honest men." But Izaak Walton forbids the application of his recipe to a pike less than three quarters of a yard, whereas a pike of only a quarter of a yard long may be cooked in a court-bouillon.

Wine is of great utility to the cook; and by wine I mean fermented grape-juice, not necessarily Bordeaux or Burgundy wine, but Ohio wine or Australian wine, provided the sweeter kinds are avoided.

Even unfermented grape-juice may often be employed in developing flavor. A roast partridge that has been basted with the fresh juice of white grapes, of any but the muscat kind, is a fine dish.

All game, without exception, requires the application of some sour, in order to develop the savor thoroughly. This is the theoretical explanation of the custom of serving salad with this course.

For making most of the fine sauces wine is as indispensable as butter, and success can only be obtained if both articles are good. "Kitchen"-wine and "kitchen"-butter are fatal to good cookery. The cook requires the best butter and good ordinary wine, but not Chateau Yquem or Chateau Lafitte or Tokay. Burgundy, or its American equivalent, for kitchen purposes, needs to be a strong and full-flavored wine, and Bordeaux, or its American equivalent, a sound and dry wine. The Madeira and Spanish wines used in cooking need to be simply unadulterated, but not necessarily fine and dear wines.

The matelote of fresh-water fish is a way of cooking in wine which is much practised in France, where at every river-side inn you may see the sign "Matelote et Friture." And a noble dish it is, when well made. The finest matelotes I have eaten were made in a skillet hung over a blazing wood-fire in a farm-house on the banks of the Loire; and half the secret of success seemed to be in the fact that the tongues of flame glided freely around the caldron, and set fire to the boiling wine just at the critical moment. Over an ordinary and comparatively cramped kitchen-fire success is only to be obtained by more careful manipulation, and this is the way you must proceed:

Take an eel and a pike, or a carp, or a perch, or a barbel, or any combinations of these fish which the larder may offer, even an eel alone, or, better, an eel and a pike; clean them and cut them up into pie,ces about two inches square. Suppose that you have two good pounds of fish. First, take a saucepan into which you put two ounces of butter and twenty small onions peeled and blanched. Let your onions get browned over the fire; then add one and a half ounces of flour, pepper and salt, and stir for five minutes, adding a few mushrooms previously browned in butter and a little lemon-juice, and a little water if the mixture needs it. Then add one pint of red wine, a bouquet garni, a clove of garlic, pepper and salt, and a pint of good bouillon or meat-juice. Cover your pot, and let this mixture simmer twenty minutes.

Then put in your slices of eel and of the less tender fish (as carp, for instance), and cook for a quarter of an hour.

Next put in your tender fish, add a wine-glassful of brandy, and cook five or ten minutes longer. Take out the bouquet and the garlic, and serve on a dish with the onions and sauce poured over the fish. The sauce will be creamy, and of a bluish-brown color.

(N.B. - Not the least essential thing in the above recipe is the meat-juice. If you have not meat-juice or good bouillon you must put two pints of wine instead of one.)

Another way of making a matelote is to put the fish in the bottom of a pan with a bouquet garni and garlic or not, as you please; cover the fish with wine, and as soon as the wine boils pour in half a glass of strong brandy and fire the whole. Let the mixture blaze and cook for a quarter of an hour, and then serve on a dish with your ragout of small onions, flour and mushrooms peppered, salted, and prepared apart in a pan, as described in the beginning of the above recipe.

The essence of the matelote lies in the employment of wine instead of water to stew the fish in; and, as already stated, complete success can only be achieved by the happy combination of wine and the juice of meat. The onions, mushrooms, etc., are merely details, but indispensable details, in the seasoning and thickening of the sauce.

(N.B. - Instead of, or together with, butter, little slices of bacon may be used to brown the onions.)

To the many ways of preparing oysters may be added the following recipes, copied from a rare and valuable seventeenth-century book called "Les Delices de la Campagne; ou est enseigne a preparer pour l'usage de la vie tout ce qui croist sur la terre et dans les eaux. Dedie aux Dames menageres "(Paris, 1654). In those days oysters were eaten raw, with pepper; fried in the half-shell, with a speck of butter and pepper on each oyster, and served, when cooked, with a drop of verjuice or vinegar and a bit of grated nutmeg; en etuvee, that is to say, detached from the shell and placed in a pan with their liquor, some butter, a little. pepper, some nutmeg, some chives, and a few bits of orange or lemon, and so boiled slowly, and served with grated bread-crumbs round the dish; en fricassee in a frying-pan with a roux of sliced onion and butter, the oysters being put into the roux with the liquor, and when they are almost cooked you add a few drops of vinegar, with some chopped parsley, and even a little mustard; drained on a napkin, peppered, dipped in batter, and fried in hot lard, then served with fried parsley round the dish and an orange squeezed over them. The same precious and practical little book tells us how to pickle oysters by taking them out of the shell, placing them in layers in a jar or barrel, peppering and salting each layer, and adding bay-laurel, cinnamon, green fennel, and, if you are rich enough, a little musk or amber. When you take them out of the barrel for use, soak them awhile if they are too salt, and then prepare them in the ways above described, or eat them with oil, or eat them as they are. These pickled oysters "may also be used for giving flavor to ragouts and roast fowl of various kinds, and for a thousand other seasonings which the cook shall judge fit."