Practical home cookery

Care must be taken that the cover, as well as the dish, is made thoroughly hot, and of course the eggs must not be poached until a minute or so before they are wanted. Two dishes such as we have described, served nice and hot, in rather small dishes than otherwise — how different are they from the large cold joint, or the immense dish of hash too often seen ! Young housekeepers should always bear in mind that very much more depends on appearances than they think for. When alone — i.e. tête-à-tête, with their husbands — let the dining-table be made as small as possible, let the cloth and dinner-napkins be white as snow, and the latter exactly folded into some pretty shape. If possible, let there be a few flowers in the centre of the table. See that the wine-glasses are without a blemish. A smeary glass always betrays a slovenly servant, and the latter equally betrays a slovenly mistress. There is also no objection to having a green glass put to each person, even if no hock or similar wine be drunk ; it brightens up the table, and looks — well, more clublike. If these little things — small in themselves, but they all tell — be attended to, a bright face and a bright pair of eyes will more than compensate for all the rest. There are many good housekeepers who may read this who will say, “ Why, all this is exceedingly simple, and only what everybody knew before ! ” Such, however, is not the case. The amount of absolute ignorance of the very first principles of cooking is far more common than many persons imagine. Again, too, with regard to the ornamental part of cooking — i.e. the art of making dishes look nice and tempting — there are hundreds of fairly good plain cooks, as they are called, who seem quite incapable of grasping the simplest idea of the subject. It is in this matter of taste, often, that the mistress will find her influence most beneficial, as her superior education will, as a rule, enable her to grasp ideas far more quickly than the uncultivated mind of the domestic. For instance, we most of us know the difference between a cold roast pheasant, perfectly plain, placed on a dish, and the same bird glazed and decorated with bright green parsley and cut lemon, and some of its feathers stuck in it in an artistic manner ; yet there are, especially among ignorant countrywomen, many who would fail to see much difference. It is in this respect that the French are so far superior as a nation to the English, though probably the highest class English cooks are better than the best French. Compare, for instance, a French pastrycook’s window in Paris with one of a similar class in London.