Buckmaster's cookery

Arrange the cutlets on a hot dish, garnish with the fried parsley. Precautions. — Great care and attention are necessary. Especially take care not to oil the butter ; if it does oil it can be rectified by stirring in a little cold water. Fish. • BAKED SPRATS. Ingredients. Herbs. 2 lbs. of Sprats. \ lb. of Bread Crumbs. * 1. Mix in a basin a teaspoonful of fine herbs with a little pepper and salt, and half a pound of bread crumbs. 2. Rub the sprats in a clean coarse cloth to remove the scales. 3. Strew over a tin dish some ol the mixed bread crumbs. 4. Arrange on these n layer of sprats, but not to cover each other. 5. Sprinkle the sprats with the mixed bread crumbs, and so on for three layers of sprats. 6. Finish with a good layer of the bread crumbs. 7. Put on the top a few pieces of butter the size of a nut, and place the dish into an oven for twenty or thirty minutes. This is a cheap, excellent dish. Precautions. — The sprats should be fresh and carefully wiped, but not washed. Cleanliness is an essential condition of all cooking. The kitchen may be small, dark, and badly arranged, but it should be kept clean. Many a dinner has been spoilt by a dirty spoon or a dirty saucepan, and failure in cooking is often attributable to want of cleanliness. In washing cooking utensils the water should be changed as soon as it becomes greasy, or the thing washed is made dirtier. The brightness of the outside of a saucepan is a poor apology for the dirt inside. I once took down six bright shining stewpans before I could find one fit for melted butter. Kitchen utensils should be frequently examined, especially those made of copper ; as soon as the copper begins to show inside they should be re-tinned, a badly tinned stewpan will give a bad colour to everything cooked in it, especially sauces and jellies. Buckmaster's Cookery. PLAIN MELTED BUTTER. TO MAKE ONE PINT. Suppose we wish lo make a pint of plain melted butter : — Take three ounces of good butter ; one ounce of flour; a pinch of pepper and salt; half a pint of cold water: put one ounce of the three ounces of butter and the one ounce of flour, into a quart stewpan, mix the butter and flour into a soft paste, add the pepper and salt and half a pint of cold water. Stir over the fire with a wooden spoon till the contents boil. If it should be too thick (which will depend on the flour, for old flour requires more water), add half a gill or so of warm water before putting in the remainder of the butter. The sauce should then be thick enough to coat the spoon. Cut the remaining two ounces of butter into pieces to accelerate the melting, take the stewpan off the fire and stir till the butter is melted. It must not be placed on the fire again. The great point in preparing melted butter is this : — as soon as it has come to the boil to take it off the fire, and then add the cold butter, which gives it the flavour of butter. The failure in properly making melted butter may arise from the flour being in excess, which destroys the flavour of the butter; or it may Sauces . arise from mixing the whole quantity of butter with the flour at once. If too thin, mix a tablespoonful of flour with half an ounce of cold butter, take the sauce off the fire and • # allow it to cool for a few minutes, add the mixture