Spinach

Spinach requires a good deal of washing. Let it swim in a pailful of water, then lift it out and the dirt will sink. Get a fresh pailful and repeat the washing. Pick away the stalks, and boil the spinach for ten or fifteen minutes. Drain it thoroughly, pressing it hard, and cut it up very fine with a knife and fork, or rub it through a wire sieve. Add a small piece of butter and some pepper and salt; make it hot in a small stewpan. Serve with hard-boiled eggs cut in halves, or with poached eggs. Some cooks boil spinach in as little water as possible; some steam it. I do not think there is any perceptible difference in the flavour afterwards, whichever method is pursued. It is doubtful whether there is much flavour in the green colouring that comes away.

Sprats

Sprats are a cheap and delicious fish. They are best grilled. The greatest drawback to sprats is that they make the whole house smell. A wire shut-up gridiron is best for sprats. Flour them and grill them; when done on one side, turn the gridiron over and do the other side. Bread and butter should be served with sprats, and some persons like lemon-juice and cayenne pepper with them.

Sprats are best cooked in relays - a few sent up hot and a few more five or ten minutes afterwards. As in frying, shut the kitchen door. Time to grill, two or three minutes, according to the fire.

Pickled Sprats

Sprats are very nice pickled. Bake them in the oven in a pickle composed of two-thirds water, one-third vinegar; add to a quart a teaspoonful of peppercorns and three or four bay-leaves. Let them get cold. This is a nice cheap breakfast dish. Indeed, many prefer it to pickled salmon. The sprats can be taken out of the pickle and eaten with a little oil and pepper.

Suet Dumplings

(See Paste, Suet, for Puddings.) - Suet dumplings are really suet paste, made plain or rich, rolled into balls, and boiled in a cloth, or they may be thrown in without a cloth when very small. The paste mixture, however, in the case of dumplings may be varied by adding a few bread crumbs, which makes the dumplings lighter. Eggs can be added, and also milk.

The following makes very good dumplings: - six ounces of suet, six ounces of flour, two ounces of bread crumbs, two eggs, a pinch of salt, and sufficient milk to moisten. The eggs should be well beaten up in the milk, and the suet well rubbed into the flour. The whole should be thoroughly mixed. Flour the cloth, tie it tight, but leave plenty of room for the dumplings to swell. The above mixture would make eight dumplings. Plunge them into boiling water, and boil for three quarters of an hour.

Suet Pudding

Proceed exactly as in making suet dumplings, only instead of rolling the mixture into several balls, roll it into one. Plain suet pudding is a ball of suet paste (see Paste, Suet, for Puddings) tied up in a floured cloth and boiled. A large suet pudding, plain, will take from two to three hours to boil.

A great variety of puddings can be made by adding to an ordinary suet pudding sugar and grated lemon-peel, ginger, lemon-juice, cinnamon, raisins, etc. In this case a sweet sauce can be served with it. (See Sweet Sauce).