The cult of the chafing dish

Jardiniere. Almost any cold cooked vegetables. For choice, use equal portions of sliced potatoes, green peas, carrots, beans, celery, tomatoes, and onions. Add plenty of dressing. Cucumbers and Anchovies. Wash, scrape and dry the anchovies. Chop them up. Have the cucumber thinly sliced and thoroughly drained ; plenty of salt, and little mixture. Sprinkle the anchovies over the sliced cucumber. Cauliflower and Bacon. Dry the cauliflower and break up into small pieces, using all the flower and very little stalk or green. Cut a couple of slices of bacon into dice, sprinkle it about in the cauliflower, and use plenty of dressing. Bread Salad. Cut three slices of stale bread (crumb only) into half-inch squares ; same amount of sliced cold cooked potatoes ; three tomatoes in quarters, one onion ; toss all well together with a good deal of dressing. This sounds very simple, but as Sam Weller's pieman said, " It's the seasoning as does it." Lest I be thought quite unspeakably impossible in these last recipes, let me assure the worthy sceptics that they are in no wise guess-work, but one and all duly approved, and that I have merely taken the trouble to collate them and set them down here. They are excellent and original. I think that many folks will be grateful for them. CHAPTER- VII • EGGS- AMD- Savouries " The vulgar boil, the learned roast an egg." Pope. In the name of the profit : Eggs ! Although farming in England may spell ruin, poultry almost always pays, and if intelligently and economically managed, one rarely hears of the failure of a poultry-farm. We import a vast number of millions of eggs annually (many of which come to a deservedly unrighteous end in villainous omelettes), but it would be easy, with capital, initiative, and incubators, to produce them one and all in Great Britain and make the egg trade a national industry. A couple of generations ago, when any one walked gingerly in the street, he or she was said to be going at an " egg-trot," because it reminded one of a good housewife riding to market at a jog-trot pace with eggs in her panniers. Let us therefore approach the subject of eggs at an " egg-trot." A good egg is never bad. That is not such an inept truism as it looks. A good egg is unspoilable, even by the worst cook. There are over four hundred and fifty ways of cooking eggs, each of which has some peculiar excellence denied to the others. You cannot even make an omelette without breaking eggs, and most people find breakfast almost impossible without the regulation hen-fruit. To teach one's grandmother how to suck eggs is a futile labour partaking of juvenile presumption, but it is at least easier than persuading the average cook that the fried egg of commerce is only one out of scores of simple breakfast egg-dishes. "There is reason in roasting eggs." Even the most trivial culinary conjuring trick has some good motive for being performed in one way rather than in another. When wood fires were usual it was more common to roast eggs than to boil them, and great care was required to prevent their being " ill- roasted, all on one side," as Touchstone says in the play. Which is an additional reason for keeping strictly to the formula. Eggs are ticklish things to monkey with, and it is much easier to break them than to make them.