Common-sense papers on cookery

must be treated, as we said, with hot water. The sort of ale that must be used for the wassail-bowl is evidently strong old ale, like Burton or Edinburgh, and I should think the more sweet and oily the ale the better the wassail. Mild ale or bitter ale would not answer, especially the latter. I have on previous occasions gone into the mysteries of mince pies and plum pudding, as well as into turkey-stuffing and goose-stuffing. How to roast a sirloin of beef, though important, is too well known to warrant many words. There is, however, no season in the year in which cold roast beef is so plentiful as the day after Christmas Day. Now, though cold roast beef really does not want any sauce at all, yet there is one that so admirably suits it that I think it is well worth mentioning at the present season. I refer to horseradish sauce. Horseradish sauce used to be made by mixing together grated horseradish with sugar, mustard, vinegar, and cream. There has, however, been an admirable modern invention called Swiss milk, preserved in tins. When, therefore, you have any compound requiring cream and sugar, by using Swiss milk with ordinary milk you get an exactly similar result, at a far less cost. To make horseradish sauce proceed as follows : — Take a stick or two of horseradish, and send it through a coarse grater till you have sufficient pulp to fill, say, a couple of table- Christmas Cheer. spoons. This grating process, like chopping onions, is far from pleasant, as it makes one cry. Next dissolve about a teaspoonful of Swiss milk in a little ordinary milk — say two tablespoonfuls of the latter — and mix in about a teaspoonful of made mustard and a teaspoonful of vinegar, then mix in the two tablespoonfuls of horseradish pulp, and stir it all together. The consistency should be that of good thick cream ; of course, by adding more pulp the mixture will be rendered thicker. Should it be too sweet, of course it is owing to there being too much Swiss milk, and as Swiss milk is apt to vary somewhat in sweetness, it is as well to act cautiously in using it, as it is always easy to add, but impossible to take away. Some persons, when serving horseradish with hot beef or hot rump steak, warm the sauce ; this is a great mistake, as by warming the sauce you utterly spoil it, and to my mind render it absolutely disagreeable. In speaking of Christmas dinners last year, I mentioned that an exceedingly nice stuffing for turkeys can be made from chestnuts. As anything in connection with turkeys is very apropos of the present season, I will describe how to make chestnut stuffing and chestnut sauce. For a large turkey, take about sixty chestnuts and slit the skins, and fry them for a short time in a little butter in a frying-pan till their husks Common-sense Cookery. come off easily. Then boil the chestnuts in some good strong stock till quite tender ; take one-half and pound it in a mortar, with a little pepper and salt and scraped fat bacon ; stuff a turkey with this and an equal quantity of ordinary veal stuffing or sausagemeat.