Cookery for beginners

The best way to manage a boiled egg at the table is the English way of setting it upright in the small end of the egg-cup, making a hole in the top large enough to admit the egg-spoon, and eating it from the shell, . seasoning as you go on. Heat and taste are undoubtedly better preserved by this method than by any other. Those who cannot afford gold-washed spoons, can procure pretty ivory ones at a trifling cost, or small teaspoons will serve the purpose. Spoons smeared with eggs should be laid to soak in cold water directly you have finished using them. Custard Eggs. Put the washed eggs in a saucepan of cold water and let them just come to a boil, then take them up. Or, lay them in a hot tin pail, cover them with boiling water, put the top on the pail and leave them on the kitchen table for five minutes. Drain off the water, pour on more boiling hot and replace the top. Wrap a hot towel about the pail, and leave it four minutes ' before dishing the eggs. They will be like a soft custard throughout, and more digestible than if cooked in any other way. Poached, or Dropped Eggs. Into a clean frying-pan, pour plenty of boiling water, and a teaspoonful of salt. Let it boil steadily, not violently. Wipe a cup dry, break an egg into it, and pour, very cau- tiously and quickly, on the surface of the water. Avoid spreading or breaking it. It will sink to the bottom for an instant, but if the water is boiling hot, will rise soon and be • cooked in about three and a half minutes. Do not put more than three into the pan at one time, or they will run into one another. Take them up with a perforated skimmer and lay on a hot, flat dish in which a teaspoonful of butter has been melted. If the whites have ragged edges, trim neatly with a sharp knife. When all are done, pepper and salt lightly, put a bit of butter on each egg and send up very hot. Eggs on Toast. Cut out with a sharp-edged tumbler or a cake cutter as many round slices of stale bread as there are eggs to be cooked. Toast these nicely, butter thinly ; cover the bottom of a heated dish with them, and pour on each a tablespoonful of boiling water. Set in the plate-warmer or an open oven while you poach eggs as directed in the" last receipt. Lay each when done on a round of toast, pepper, salt and butter, and serve. Eggs on Sayory Toast. Toast rounds of stale bread as directed in preceding receipt, but instead of moistening them with hot water, pour upon them, as they lie in the dish, two tablespoonfuls of boiling gravy to each slice. A half-cupful of gravy left over from yesterday's roast or stew skimmed free of fat, heated, thinned with a very little boiling water, well-seasoned, then strained and boiled up quickly, makes this a tempting dish. Poach as many eggs as you have rounds of toast, and lay on these, with pepper, salt and bits of butter. Scrambled or Stirred Eggs. Nine eggs. One tablespoonful of butter. Half a teaspoonful of salt. A little pepper. Half a teaspoonful of chopped parsley very fine. Break the eggs altogether in a bowl. Put the butter in a clean frying-pan and set it on the range. As it melts, add pepper, salt and parsley. When it hisses, pour in the eggs, and begin at once to stir them, scraping the bottom of the pan from the sides toward the centre, until you have a soft, moist mass just firm enough not to run over the bottom of the heated dish on which you turn it out. Make it into a neat mound. Some people prefer it without the parsley. In serving everything^ be careful that the rims of the dishes are perfectly clean. The effect of the most delicious viand is spoiled by drops or smears of food on the vessel containing it. If you heap your scrambled eggs on a plat-