Culinary jottings

" (Eufs aux oignons'' : — Slice up a good sized Bombay onion, and fry the rings in a table-spoonful of butter till they are nice and yellow, add a little flour to the butter, and when it is mixed, pour in a breakfast-cupful of cream or fresh milk : give this a dashing with salt and " spiced pepper," and put into the sauce four hard-boiled eggs cut into slices ; simmer the sauce-pan till its contents are thoroughly hot, and serve garnished with curls of crisply fried bacon, alternated with neatly cut pieces of fried bread. If you stir a table-spoonful of good curry powder and a salt-spoonful of sugar into the melted butter and onions before adding the flour and cream, and cut the eggs in halves only, lengthwise, the dish will be "œufs à l'Indienne." Jsf.B. — Plainly poached eggs served on toast, with this curry sauce poured over them, are very nice, and more digestible than the hard boiled. Supposing that you desire to err on the side of studied simplicity, cut four hard-boiled eggs in halves, trim them like "œufs farcis" to stand upright, set them on a flat silver dish slightly buttered, and bake them until quite hot, then serve with a cap of maitre d'hotel butter, prawn butter (or any fancy butter left from last night's dinner) melting over each half egg. The error will be pardonable, "Œufs aux topinambours" : — This delicious entremets should be prepared in this wise : — Choose four good sized Jerusalem artichokes, trim, boil, and set them to cool ; take four hard-boiled eggs, and cut them in halves ; out of the artichokes prepare eight flat slices, and place half an egg upon each slice with the rounded end uppermost : set them on a buttered dish, heat them thoroughly in the oven, and just before serving, pour over them some thickly worked "velouté au Parmesan," or some melted maitre (Thotel butter. A dusting of " spiced salt" should be given on taking the eggs from the oven. This entremets is nicer still with artichoke bottoms, — the leafy kind, and with œufs farcis instead of plain hardboiled eggs. Maccaroxi, and the numerous varieties of the Italian ])aste family of which it is the best known member, should invariably be plunged into boiling water to commence with — no matter whether you intend to cook them in milk, or stock, afterwards — in order to rid them of the imperceptible dirt which clings to them. Remember that maccaroni is a much handled comestible, and that washing it in water is not enough. I adverted to this when speaking of soups (page 34), and described how the cleansing can alone be effected. Besides, maccaroni must not be wetted to begin with by any liquid not boiling. Mark these golden rules : — " Washing maccaroni is useless and unnecessary, putting it to cook in cold water is a blunder, soaking it is a crime." Treat it as our native cooks do rice, — here let me yield to Raraasamy, or his tunny-cutch (?) the praise that either he, or she, deserves, — and throw it into plenty of boiling water, test it occasionally with a fork, as soon as it is nice and tender, stop the boiling by a dash of cold water, lift the vessel, and drain it completely, returning the maccaroni to the hot pan. If yon want to cook Italian pastes in milk or stock.