The "Queen" cookery books: Entrees

four sprays of parsley, one medium onion sliced, a bay leaf, and two or three peppercorns. This is sufficient for a good quantity. of meat; for instance, a whole chicken when cut up would only need half the above) . Scraps of chicken, pieces of cold cooked veal cut into pieces the size of a florin, remains of sweetbreads, brains, cold tongue, sliced vegetable marrow, cucumber, artichokes, potato, broken-up cauliflower, &c., can, all and any, be used in this way, and the greater the mixture the better the dish . Only remember the cook must know how to fry to perfection before attempting this frittura. Frying is not by any means a difficult art, granted a little care and intelligence The three great points in fritter-frying are, good batter, plenty of friture (or frying fat), and a clear even fire. If you go in for this style of cookery it is well worth while to invest in a proper frying kettle ; as this is, however, often rather an expensive item, it is just as serviceable to buy a pan known to ironmongers as a “ fish pan,” which is simply a twohandled rather shallow fish kettle without a lid, and usually sold with a wire drainer, as it is generally used for frying fish in. This costs but a few shillings even in seamless steel, and is of course cheaper (though naturally not so durable) if bought in seamed tin. (This pan, of a fairly large size, I have, by the way, frequently utilised as a bain-marie.') Having seen that your pan is perfectly clean and dry, put in whatever friture you choose, being careful to have it when melted fully two inches deep, but see that there is from two and a half to three inches space above this to prevent any chance of boiling over, or any such like accident. With regard to the frying fat to be used opinions differ ; oil is, of course, the favourite friture abroad, but its price is somewhat prohibitive over here, though, like every other fat, it can be used more than once. It, however, does not lend itself to economical use in the way other fats do, as once burnt there is no way of re-clarifying it. Jewish cooks often use pure cotton seed oil, which is much cheaper than good olive oil, but this, unless very refined, has a distinctly objectionable smell when cooking, which renders its use in particular households undesirable. Next to oil undoubtedly comes beef dripping, a medium objected to, however, greatly by many so-called “high class cooks,” partly through ignorance, partly through a dishonest fear of loss, as such persons appear to consider the sale of the household dripping a perquisite quite compatible with a character for honesty ! However, considering so great a culinary authority as M. Goutfe considers it a distinctly praiseworthy frying medium, recommending the collection of all dripping from roast meat, and next to this the rendering down of good beef suet for frying purposes, it hardly becomes less competent authorities to reject this substance as “ impossible,” as I have before now heard it called by a haughty but ignorant soi-disant cordon-bleu. I may add a fact that may surprise a good many British housekeepers, and that is that the same high kitchen oracle utterly condemns the use of lard, as always carrying with it the risk (if not actually the inevitable certainty) of greasiness in whatever is