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

In handing round curry and rice the servant should be instructed to hand the rice before the curry, the proper plan being to place a spoonful of rice in the plate, and to form it into a •sort of well. The curry is then taken and placed in the centre, surrounded by the white rim. There are various ways in which a tin of Halford’s curry can be altered in flavour according to the taste of the eater. For instance, many persons have a great objection to the flavour of garlic, while with others garlic is most popular. Those who are very fond of the flavour of onion and garlic would do well to add a little of this to the curry. A few beads of garlic can be placed in the curry sauce for a time, and then taken out, or, what is still better, an onion or a couple of onions can be sliced and fried a nice dark-brown colour in the frying-pan. Some of the curry sauce should then be added to it, and the whole allowed to boil for a few minutes ; then rub the lot through a wire sieve. When this is done it will be best to rub the whole of the sauce through the sieve, and as Halford’s curry contains a certain quantity of carrot, the carrot had better be rubbed through the sieve with the onion. Another way of heating curry is to boil some long red chilies in the sauce. Real Indian curry owes its heat to what is known as chili paste, and when the chilies themselves are boiled in curry sauce a better flavour is produced than simply by adding curry powder. Curried prawns form a most delicious dish, and are best served at breakfast. In the case of curried prawns and curried shrimps the rice is best served in the same dish. The boiled rice should be placed on the dish first, a well made in the rice, and the contents of the tin of curry poured into it. In using Halford's curry sauce for fresh shrimps the shrimps should be picked. Two quarts of shrimps will yield nearly a pint of picked shrimps. When the shrimps have not been too much salted it will be found a very great improvement to put all the heads into a pestle and mortar or thick basin with a little stock, and pound them as much as possible so as to mix up in the stock that little dark part in the head of the shrimp which corresponds to the soft meat in the back of a crab and the green soft part in the head of a lobster, and contains by far the most delicious flavour of the shrimp. It can then be added to the curry sauce, which should be made hot. The picked shrimps should then be thrown into the hot sauce, and the whole kept on the fire only just sufficiently long to make the shrimps hot through ; they should not be allowed to boil. In serving curried lobster also the rice should be placed on a small dish with the curry. Should the cook have in the house that very valuable compound known as lobster butter, a small quantity added to the curry will be found a decided improvement. I cannot too strongly impress on cooks the great importance of keeping all the red coral from the lobster, making it into lobster butter, and putting it by for use. Lobster butter is made as follows : — The red coral should be pounded with about an equal quantity of butter. The coral should be first washed and all the soft part of the meat of the lobster removed before it „is pounded.