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

when cooks make melted butter they make a very much larger quantity than is required. A common mistake with English cooks is to imagine that melted butter is simply milk thickened with a little butter and flour. Real butter sauce, as it should properly be called, is a far nicer and at the same time a more expensive dish. The proper method of making good butter sauce is to take, say a quarter of a pound of butter, and divide this into six equal parts. Take one of these parts, and mix it with an equal weight of flour. Melt this in the oven, and mix it in thoroughly with the flour. Add to this a quarter of a pint of water, and stir the whole over the fire till it becomes slightly thick. Then gradually add and dissolve in this the remaining five pieces of the buttei . Should the butter sauce show any tendency to curdle, it can be instantly brought back into its proper state by the addition of a small quantity of cold water, or, better still, a small lump of ice. Caper sauce is sim- ply capers chopped fine and added to the butter sauce as we have mentioned. When the butter sauce is made with plenty of butter, water will be found far better than milk ; when the caper sauce is made rich in the way wre have described, half a ladleful, or a little more, is ample for each person. House- keepers would do well to notice the quantity of melted butter usually made by ordinary cooks. They will find as a rule as much is made for four persons as would suffice for twelve. One very use- ful method of using capers is to make — CAPER SAUCE PIQUANTE.— It will be found that in the majority of cookery books the quantity of vine- gar given is very excessive. To make sauce piquante, chop up a couple of shalots, a couple of green gherkins, and a dessert-spoonful of French capers. Place these in a small stewpan, with two tablespoonfuls of French vinegar. Allow' these to simmer gently over the fire till the whole of the vinegar is nearly boiled awray. Then add a quarter of a, pint of good brown gravy, previously thickened. By allowing the vinegar to evaporate in the stew'pan the acidity which too fre- quently accompanies sauce piquante is avoided. One other very useful purpose for which capers can be used is to make — HOUSEKEEPER'S GUIDE. "CAPER” BLACK BUTTER— As in sauce piquante, so too in black butter, it will be often found that this delicious accompaniment to fish is spoiled by being made too acid. To make black butter, therefore, proceed as follows : Take a small quantity of butter— say two ounces— and melt it in a frying-pan till it turns a rich, dark, brown-mahogany colour. Then remove it from the fire and wait a few seconds till the tempera- ture is reduced, so that it is not above that of boiling water, and add to it a dessert-spoonful of chopped capers, half a dessert-spoonful of vinegar in which the capers have been preserved, a des- sert-spoonful of Harvey’ssauce, adessert- spoonful of mushroom catsup, and a little black pepper. This sauce is usually served with skate. On the Continent capers are used to make — CAPER SAUCE FOR FISH.— This is simply done by adding the capers whole, just as they are, to some kind of plain melted butter or white sauce. When capers are used in this form the larger they are the better. CAPERS FOR MAYONNAISE.— One