The housekeeper's guide to preserved meats, fruits, vegetables, &c

enough ox-tail soup for six or eight persons. Open two tins of ox-tail soup and add an equal quantity of good stock. Now add a brimming teaspoonful of Crosse and Blackwell’s extract of meat, and a brimming table-spoonful of brown roux. Strain off the soup first of all from the meat. Then dissolve in the soup the extract of meat and brown roux, and let it boil. After it has boiled let it simmer for a short time, skimming the surface in order to get rid of the butter or fat contained in the roux. Now replace the meat in the soup just before serving and add a wineglassful of sherry. The presence of the bones in the tail and some of the meat is a guarantee that it is real ox-tail soup, and when soup is treated in this way there are very few who would not imagine that the Soup had been made from fresh ox-tail itself. In many parts of the country where ox-tails are difficult to obtain, these tins of ox-tail soup make an excellent substitute. OYSTERS, TINNED.— Tinned oysters are a very valuable preserved food, and none the less so considering that really good natives now fetch three shillings and sixpence a dozen. Tinned oysters can be used for making both oyster soup and oyster pates. I think the most valuable part of tinned oysters is the liquor in which the oysters are preserved. This contains an enormous amount of strong oyster flavour. The drawback to the oysters themselves is that they are as a rule hard, tough, and somewhat indigestible. Indeed occasionally we may come across tinned oysters, which, when in the mouth, remind one of chewing a white kid glove. Consequently the cook should always as nearly as possible act as follows. Tinned oysters are extremely valuable to be used to give oyster flavour, but are not suited to be eaten by themselves, though in many establishments in London oyster pates and oyster soups are made from tinned oysters, the oysters themselves being served up whole. A tin of oysters will make an excellent dish of oyster pates with the assistance of another small tin of mushrooms. Pour the liquor off both into a small saucepan with the oysters themselves. If the liquor be excessive in quantity the cook can reduce it by letting it boil. Next add to this half a pint of boiling milk. Now take a wire sieve and with a wooden spoon rub the whole of the oysters through it. The oysters now exist really in the form of a pulp in the sauce. Next take sufficient butter and flour to make this mixture as thick as good gruel. .Add to it a little pepper and a brimming teaspoonful or rather more of anchovy sauce, recollecting first to make it boil. Next add a “ suspicion of nutmeg” and about half a teaspoonful of lemon juice. Now take the whole of the mushrooms and cut them up into small pieces about the size of the top of the little finger. Put these into the thick sauce and then fill the pate cases, taking care to make the mixture thoroughly hot first. The pate cases need now only to be put into the oven for the pastry to be made hot through, and the pates can then be served. When housekeepers call to mind how very expensive are fresh oysters, and how very cheap these small tins of mushrooms and oysters are, they will see at once how very nice and also economical a dish can be made. Should there be no pate cases the same mixture exactly can be used for making imitation scalloped oysters.