The cult of the chafing dish

clear. This takes some little time, but it is worth waiting for. Add a squeeze of lemon juice, a wine-glass of sherry, and a teaspoon of Worcester sauce. Give a final stir to these ingredients, and serve it up steaming hot. There is extraordinary reviving power about a basin of good turtle soup, and, as I think I have shown, it is quite a mistake to deem it an expensive luxury. Abraham Hay ward, Q.C., in his inimitable book, " The Art of Dining," which were originally Quarterly Review articles on Police Magistrate Walker's "Original" (1835), says that "Turtle Soup from Painter's in Leadenhall Street is decidedly the best thing in the shape of soup that can be had In this or perhaps in any other country." And if an Alderman, a Queen's Counsel, a Police Magistrate — and Chaffinda — agree on this point, who shall say them nay .'' The student of mid-Victorian ballads will remember, too, the touching allusion to turtle soup in " Ferdinando and Elvira," by one Bab, where the hero searches for the crackermotto poet, and at last unearths him at a confectioner's where he has ordered soup: " ' Found at last ! ' I madly shouted. * Gentle pieman, you astound me ! ' Then I waved the turtle soup enthusiastically round me." But this was, on reflection, probably mock turtle soup, no bad thing either, vide Alice's interview with the Gryphon. It lives, when cold, in a basin, and is set hard and is therefore wavable. American soups are not to be despised. On the contrary, they make most excellent good eating — or drinking ; which is it .'' do we eat or drink soup ? An American book of etiquette says, " Never chew your soup, always swallow it whole." Anyhow I have tried, and found good, Clam Chowder, Clam Broth, Chicken Gumbo, Okra. Terrapin, and Vegetable Soups. They are in tins, against which I confess I am prejudiced, but as yet I am totally unpoisoned, and I am told that there is a possibility of their being shortly put up in bottles. Each tin has full instructions, and these are quite applicable to the Chafing Dish, care always being taken not to boil the soup, but to heat it gently and continuously. The Clam Chowder and Clam Broth are both quite excellent, of a distinct individual flavour, cheering, and, I opine, wholesome. They have a peculiar cachet of their own, and lend a certain Transatlantic originality to an otherwise banal Chafing- Dish luncheon. These and other American provisions I procure from Jackson's in Piccadilly. They are well "packed," and adapt themselves excellently to unexpected calls on a limited larder. Their variety is infinite, and their flavour remains good and true. Tinned Broadway in London is a pleasant experience. There are other American delicacies, to which reference will be made in due course, which adapt themselves admirably to Chafing-Dish idiosyncrasies. Columbus' patent egg is not the only culinary innovation from the New World, but the average British cook is so ignorantly conservative and abhorrently Chauvinistic that she dreads novelty as she dreads the Devil. Poor Man's Soup. Poor Man's Soup, as the French call it, is a very restorative dish after a bad day on the Stock Exchange, although there is little of the Poor Man about it save the name.