Culinary jottings

Have ready some hot boiled, and drained maccaroni in a sauce-pan, empty all the sauce that remains amongst the maccaroni, shake into it a table-spoonful of finely grated cheese, toss the whole over the fire for a minute, and dish it separately in a very hot dish. Serve the two together immediately. Maccaroni, in the usual Italian fashion, is infinitely superior to our perpetual method of serving it. It makes an excellent luncheon dish. Boil the maccaroni in boiling water in a sauce-pan (which may be rubbed with a clove of garlic) until it is tender ; the moment it is tender, stop the boiling by adding a cup of cold water, if not, it will be sodden. Drain it carefully, as you do rice, and let it remain in the hot sauce-pan. Now, stir into it a tablespoonful of the best fresh, or preserved butter (the new Denmark brand is quite first-rate) and as you work this about over the fire, an assistant should add by degrees a breakfast-cupful of fresh tomato pulp, a little salt and black pepper, and lastly, a heaped up table-spoonful of either grated Parmesan from the bottle, or any mild thoroughly powdered dry cheese : serve steaming hot without delay. The cheese should form long threads when lifted from the dish with the maccaroni. If you have any stock or consomme to spare, you can improve this dish by simmering the maccaroni therein after the draining stage. When the stock has been absorbed, add the tomato, &c. I could, of course, go on suggesting dishes, and describing them ad infinitum — for luncheons are little banquets which afford enthusiastic cooks a pleasant field for the exercise of their inventive faculties. I will, however, conclude my chat about luncheon parties with a receipt for a mayonnaise sauce which has been communicated to me by the artist W. H. H. :— Put the yolks of three large, or four ordinary Indian eggs, (raw) in a flat joint dish with a tea-spoonful of salt, and the juice of two limes, and beat them well : tip the dish on end at an angle of about 35 ° , by slipping a thick book under the rim at one end. Open afresh bottle of salad oil, and get an assistant to let the oil fall, in rapidly succeeding drops, upon the centre of the dish, whilst you continue beating the egg mixture upwards to make it pass under the stream of dinpping oil. Half a pint of salad oil may be thus expended, and you will, by that time, have a sauce as thick as treacle, and of a golden yellow tint. Arrange your mayonnaise in its dish (W. H. H. recommends the juicy slices of a really well flavoured cold leg of mutton) shake a few drops of tarragon vinegar over it, with a dust of black pepper : arrange some well dried lettuce leaves, trimmed with a silver dessert knife, over the mayonnaise ; garnish as you like, with broken aspic jelly, gherkins, turned olives, capers, fillets of anchovy, balls of green or yellow butter, plain hard-boiled yolks of egg whole, &c., ice the sauce, and pour it over all. W. H. H. suggests that " grace" should follow. He is right. A few words must now be said regarding miscellaneous luncheons : — the office snacklet, the lunch in the train, or alfresco out shooting, the " tiffin" at home, a lady's morceau, and the mid-day meal of the convalescent.