The complete Indian housekeeper & cook

during the heat of the day increase comfort. A bottle of chlorodyne and some good whisky or brandy should not be forgotten. Even if a provision basket is not carried, it is well to have a tin of biscuits and a breakfast cup or tumbler into which the tea purchased at the refreshment rooms can be poured. This is especially convenient in the railway joui’ney across France or Italy. In these later days, a bicycle dress is as much a necessity in India as in England ; indeed, even more so, since the Indian roads, level, smooth, and springy, seem made for the scorcher, the only drawbacks being dust and buffaloes. As, even with the lessening of fatigue caused by the perfection of track, bicycling is hardly the exercise for very hot weather, the usual English outfit is all that is required. It must be remembered, moreover, that the pneumatic tyres are very liable to burst unless the machine is carefully protected from the sun. CHAPTER XX PRELIMINARY REMARKS ON COOKING The number of ladies witli a practical knowledge of cook- ing is few, despite schools of cookery and a general but ill- defined feeling that modern education is wanting in what was undoubtedly the first duty of women. Even when some amount of training is gone through, it is apt to take the form of learning how to make boned larks with truffles, or ice pudding and nougfits — dishes admirable in themselves, but not of much use as food staples; whereas the knowledge really required by a mistress is of that half-practical, half- theoretical and wholly didactic description, which will enable her to find reasonable fault with her servant. We have all laughed at the young bride who said tentatively, ''And if you please, cook, you needn t put the lumps in the butter sauce another time, for your master doesn’t care for them ” ; but numbeis of the laughers would be puzzled to tell how the evil was to be prevented, or how the lumps came. In the same way most people like clear, golden-brown, well-flavoured soup, and creamy rice puddings ; but unless their cook knows how to send these to table they cannot tell what is lacking. Finally, they know too little of the dangers besetting a dainty dinner to be able to weigh out blame accurately, and their eye is equal for a curdled sauce and a greasy cutlet. Whereas the former may occur to Francatelli himself, and the latter IS simply inexcusable even in a coolie. It is this art of just appraisal and dispassionate judgment that the mistress must cultivate, and to aid her in tiie task we enumerate a few of the most common causes for the most glaring faults. •V caused by failure to skim and too rapid boiling by which the flakes of albumen-which anv one who has had a cup of beef-tea must have seen— are broken up so hne that straining will not rid the soup of them. The 323 224 The Complete Indian remedy is to put in more albumen, which, coagulating with heat, closes round and imprisons the floating atoms in larger flakes. White of egg, or raw, lean meat, finely minced, whipped up with a teacup of cold water, will clear any soup. Hie stock must first be allowed to cool a little, and after the albumen is added it must be quickly stirred until the boiling point, so as to ensure it being well mixed.