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

APRICOT JAM. — Apricot jam is generally considered to be the king among jams; it is universally liked, and is as a rule rather more expensive than the majority of jams. For making all kinds of sweets where jam is required apricot jam is certainly superior to others. For sweet omelets apricot jam is the best. In making a sweet omelet cooks should bear in mind that they should be served immediately they are made. Now it will often be found, when an omelet is served, that though the omelet itself is nice and hot, the jam served with it is nearly cold. Sometimes cooks will make the omelet, then add a spoonful or two of jam out of the pot, wrap the omelet over the jam, and put it in the oven to get hot. Too often it is left there not 'quite long enough for the jam to get properly hot and yet quite long enough for the omelet to get heavy. In making sweet omelets with jam always take out what jam you think will be necessary, put it on a plate and put it in the oven before you make the omelet. This applies of course to every kind of jam. By this means you can put the jam in the omelet at once and serve the omelet directly it is made. Apricot jam, owing to its bright colour, forms a very pretty contrast with jam of other colours, such as greengage or raspberry. A very pretty dish can be made owing to the contrast of colour of two different kinds of jam, one of which is apricot, as follows. Take some rice and boil it in some milk till it is tender, using about sufficient milk for the rice to just absorb it. Sweeten the rice and flavour it with a little cinnamon or lemon-peel, or essence of almonds. Mix in three or four eggs, and when thoroughly mixed put it in a baking dish say eight inches square and put it in the oven to bake. Take care first to butter the dish. When the rice cake is set, which owing to the eggs it will soon do, take out the square cake, and put on it eight layers of apricot and raspberry jam in alternate layers one inch each. It is best to hold a piece of tin or cardboard upright while putting on the jam so as to prevent the jams running into one another. Now take a sharp knife and cut the rice cake in eight strips, cutting across the straight layers. You nave now eight strips, call them Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, counting from the left. Now reverse the position of strips Nos. 2, 4, G and 8 — i.e., just turn them round and place the eight strips close together, and you have a perfect chess-board of sixty-four ■squares alternately red and yellow. This has a very pretty effect and is a very nice and suitable dish for children’s evening parties. English cooks, I mean the “good plain cooks,” are too often unnecessarily plain. They cannot get beyond the large oval open jam tart, and the only attempt at ornament is the filigree work of little bars of pastry thrown across. It is just as easy to make a round tart as an oval one. It is merely a question of the shape of the tin. Then how easy to fill the tart with jams varying in colour. Draw two lines across the tart through the centre at right angles to one another and fill the four quarter circles, with apricot jam in one, greengage in the next, some pineapple jam or marmalade or peach jam next, so that it is opposite the lightcoloured apricot jam, and then some strawberry or raspberry jam in the remaining quarter circle.