The cult of the chafing dish

must be taken in the second operation to tempt forth, and, in some cases, to restore the natural flavour. Cold cooked meat needs long and gentle cooking, a strong clear flame, without sudden differences in temperature, and it may be taken as a general rule that cold meat needs practically as long to cook as raw meat. Browned Tongue. For example, take half a dozen slices of cooked tongue, spread on each of them a modicum of made mustard, and let each slice repose for about two minutes in a little bath of salad oil (about enough to cover the bottom of a soup plate). Put the slices one on top of another until they make a compact little heap. Put the heap of tongue between two plates, so as to expel the superfluous oil. Let it remain thus for half an hour. Then put a nutmeg of butter in the blazer, dismember the heap of tongue, and put the slices into the frizzling butter and turn them until they are brown. A little sauce, Worcester, Robert, or Piquant, may be added to suit individual taste. Serve very hot, with sippets of toast. I have ventured to christen this dish 'Browned 'Tongue, which is simple and descriptive, but every Chafist is entitled to call it what he likes. There is little, if any, copyright in Chafing-Dish titles, Alexandre Dumas, author and cook, protests against the mishandling of names : " Les fantaisies de saucer, de mettre sur le gril, et de faire rotir nos grands hornmes." Personally I object to cooking simple fare and then dubbing it a la Quelque chose. Outside the few score well-known, and, so to say, classic titles of more or less elaborate dishes, which are practically standardised, there seems to me to be no reason to invent riddles in nomenclature when the " short title," as they say in ParUamentary Bills, is amply descriptive. It has been my ill-fortune to be introduced, at an otherwise harmless suburban dinner, to a catastrophe of cutlets, garnished with tinned vegetables, and to be gravely informed, on an ill-spelt menu, that it was " Cutelletes d' Agneau a la Jardinnier" which would be ludicrous, were it not sad. Then how often does the kind hostess, without a punitive thought in her composition, write down Soufflet when she means Souffli ? But mistakes are easily made, as witness that popular sign of a French cabaret, particularly in the provinces, Ju Lion d'Or. If you look carefully at the signboard, you will find a man asleep, the punning name of the hotel implying Au lit on dort. But the whole question of Menus (Bills of Fare, if you please), and their mistranslation, is too vast to enter upon here, alluring though the subject may be. The language of the restaurant cook, save in especial instances, is as bad, although in a quite different sense, as that of the Whitechapel Hooligan. At the same time, it is absurd to insist upon the literal translation of the untranslatable. " Out of works " for " Hors d'oeuvres " ; " Soup at the good woman " for " Potage i la bonne femme " ; " Smile of a calf at the banker's wife " for " Ris de veau a la financiere " ; and, lastly, " Anchovies on the sofa " for " Anchois sur canap6," are all well enough in their way, but hardly an example to be followed, although they make "very pretty patriotic eating."