Practical home cookery

When there has been a large lobster salad or salads made, the cook is often at a loss how to utilise the lobster that is left. In the first place, lobster will not keep sometimes even one hot night. One very good method of using up any remains is what is called bashawed lobster. Take all the pieces of lobster left, and cut them up with a knife and fork ; chop up a little piece of onion, about the size of the top of the little finger, and a small piece of parsley. Mix it with the pieces of lobster, and a very little anchovy sauce and cayenne pepper. Cut up a piece of butter into little pieces, and mix in and fill the shell part of the lobster — i.e. the two half-tails. Cover these shells over the top with some fine bread-crumbs, and shake a few fine bread-raspings on the top. Put the shells in the oven for ten minutes, or a little longer, and serve hot. Some fried parsley makes a good garnish in contrast with the red shell, and is also a great improvement to the flavour. This is a capital supper dish after a hot day, can be made early in the afternoon, and only requires what the cooks call “ popping in the oven.” Cook will, of course, maintain that the remains of a lobster or lobsters cannot be done this way properly. The reason is, lobster — and, in fact, shell-fish generally — has particular charms for the kitchen. Servants are partial also to cucumber, vinegar, liver and bacon, lamb’s fry, roast pork and sage-and-onions, winkles. 1 13 radishes, etc. — almost anything with stuffing, onions — in fact, generally it may be said that anything that possesses what is vulgarly known as the property of rising seems adapted to them. They invariably dishke calves heads and cold boiled beef, or, in fact, any cold meat, especially Australian. Like Mrs. Gamp, they scorn hash, but somehow like stewed steak, both dishes affording admirable opportunities for displays of dexterity with the blade of the knife. The world, thanks to love of dress, drink, etc., is changing very rapidly. Where the class of servants is to come from ten years hence, adapted to small families of limited incomes, is a problem to be solved in the future. H CHAPTER XIII. What subject is so suitable for early summer ? Who has not at times experienced that strange and almost painful feeling that must exist in the throat in order that the sensation may be worthy of the name of “ thirst ? ” I recollect many years ago either hearing or reading a horrible story of the refinement of cruelty. A prisoner is supposed to have been lowered into a deep dungeon, and to have been left for a whole day without food. Ravenous with hunger, what are his feehngs on seeing the dungeon-top unclosed, and slowly lowered a silver dish containing probably food ! The dish is at length grasped and uncovered, and is found to contain some bread and nicely cooked salt fish, both of which are eagerly devoured. The dish is slowly drawn up, and the prisoner left alone. What, however, were the pains of hunger that he felt compared to the raging thirst he now experiences, a thirst greatly increased by the nature of the food he has eaten — viz., salt fish ! Another twenty-four hours of agony, tenfold greater than he experienced before, pass heavily away, and again the dungeon opens, and a large and beautiful silver goblet is seen slowly to descend, and sends a quiver of hope through the frame.