Practical home cookery

and so arrange it that the outer leaves are smooth and uniform ; cover these leaves entirely with the sauce, using if possible a silver knife or ivory paper-knife for the purpose ; place the slices of salmon neatly round the base of the salad, which ought in appearance to resemble a mould of solid custard. Ornament the sauce by dropping on little pieces of finely -chopped parsley, and sticking in a few dried capers, and stick a little sprig of bright-green parsley on the top ; a few olives and anchovies are a great improvement. A dish of this description makes a very pretty addition either to the supper-table or at lunch. I need scarcely add that hard-boiled eggs cut up form a capital garnish to almost every kind of salad. The eggs, to taste nice, should be new-laid. They should be placed in a saucepan in cold water, and allowed to remain in a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes after the water boils ; they should then be taken out and placed in cold water, and had better not be peeled and cut up till within, say, half an hour of the salad being eaten, as hard-boiled egg is apt to change its colour if exposed to the air too long. When a silver dish is used, the egg will discolour it very much, so bear in mind to clean it as soon as possible. Mayonnaise sauce will keep two or even more days, if kept in a very cool place. CHAPTER XII. There are perhaps few months that test the cook’s art more than that of August ; and not only the cook, but the housekeeper, must exercise some little tact, in order to avoid the waste that too often ensues from heat and thunderstorms. We live in so variable a climate that housekeepers are at times apt to forget that, though in winter a haunch of mutton will hang for a month, and be all the better for it, yet there are occasional days on which meat that has been killed in the early morning is bad by sunset. It is these sultry days that seem to invite us to wander forth into some shady wood, and, stretched on the soft green turf, eat cooling food and imbibe cooling drinks, by the side of some clear rippling brook. Nor should we necessarily, whatever be the weather, enjoy our lunch the less for a little society — in other words, August hot days are admirably adapted for picnics. Picnic ! the very name conjures up before my eyes hundreds of faces. Wonderful institution ! almost the only one that seems capable of driving that curse of English society, formality, out of the field. First, the unpacking of the huge hampers, at times necessitating almost the diving in of two heads at once — bright eyes meet under cover of the unromantic wickerwork, and look brighter for the meeting. It is wonderful, by-the-bye, how stooping over a hamper causes most people to flush. Ah ! happy time, when io6 most are young, and the world before them as fresh, as bright, and as green as the grass on which they sit. How many staid old married couples are there who can look back upon a picnic as the starting-point in their long road of happiness ! No rose, however, without a thorn. How many, too, can look upon the same festive occasion, and remember as if yesterday the sharp sting of the green-eyed monster, then felt for the first time, and the poison of which has blighted a lifetime ! “ Lift not the festal mask, enough to know No scene of mortal life but teems with mortal woe.”