Culinary jottings

Unlike the greater part of our culinary labours, this pretty item, of our menu need cost us but little trouble. We can obtain many excellent things wherewith to captivate the appetite, and we can make others which in their way are generally successful. Olives farcies, olives plain, anchovies in oil, sardines, sliced Bologna sausage, preserved tunny, lax, lobster, cod's roes, seer-fish roes, reindeer's tongues, ox tongue, devilled ham, potted meats, fancy butters, herrings d la sardine, pilchards in oil, caviare, oysters, pickles, cucumber, radishes, thin bread and butter, wafer biscuits, oaten biscuits, and last but not least " Bombay ducks," provide us with a goodly list from which to choose our tasty morsels. Hors d'oeuvres should be served in a dish divided into compartments. Tongue, sausages, and ham, should be most delicately sliced. Preserved fish should be very carefully wiped free from all tin-oil, and re-dressed with the finest salad oil : if of a large kind, small portions should be cut to suit the dish. Potted meats should be fresh, home-made, and prettily shaped in a cone. Caviare should be turned out of the tin, and garnished with quarters of lime. Fancy butters must be iced, and served separately. Sardines can be greatly improved by being treated as " Norwegian Anchovies." Open a tin of the best sardines, take the fish out one by one, and place them on a dish. Wipe them free from oil, carefully pick off their skins and divide each sardine in half lengthwise. Give the fillets thus obtained a dusting of white pepper. Now, take an oval earthenware pot, see that it is dry and clean, slice a Bombay onion up, and put a layer of the rings at the bottom of the pot, with a cinnamon leaf, and a pepper corn or two. Arrange over this a layer of sardine fillets, and continue the process until the pot is filled, or the fillets are exhausted. Pour over the layers a marinade of oil and vinegar (one spoonful of the latter to four of the former) and" in a few hours the sardines may be eaten. Sometimes sardines are too soft to fillet ; in that case be contented with skinning them only. Oysters, of course, are never sent round with the cheese. When they appear before dinner, send them up in their shells, and be quick with their accompaniments. You sometimes see a hungry man polish off his bivalves before the lime, pepper, and bread and butter, have reached liini. You can combat this contingency by breaking up the dishes containing these adjuncts into detachments, and serving them in two or three directions at once. But a far better plan is this. Before dinner is announced, put the plates of oysters with the slices of brown bread and butter upon them in each guest's place, and send your vinegar and pepper round as fast as you can after they are seated. In selecting your hors d'oeuvres to accompany the cheese try to avoid giving two fishy things on the same dish, thus : — do not give anchovies, and prawn butter together, or olives farcies and caviare ; but take, let us say, anchovy butter, devilled ham, and oat biscuit, or cream cheese, olives farcies, and wafer biscuit. Here are a few combinations : — Anchovy fillets, watercress, butter, dry toast. Kippered seer fish, sliced tongue, oat biscuit. Herring d la sardine, potted tongue, dry biscuit. Cheese fingers, green butter, radishes.