Culinary jottings

With these materials the cook should make a fairly good broth, flavouring it with an onion, and any fragments of vegetable he may have at hand, a little mushroom ketchup, some pepper corns, a dessert-spoonful of mixed dried herbs, the peel of a lime, a tea-spoonful of anchovy sauce or an anchovy finely chopped, a dessert-spoonful of vinegar, a pinch of sugar, and salt to taste. When the scraps and bones have simmered secundum artem under careful supervision for an hour, a dash of Madeira may be stirred into the sauce-pan, and in a few minutes the broth may be strained off into a bowl. As soon as the fat, that the liquid may throw up, has been removed, the cook will have at his command a very excellent substitute for real gravy wherewith to moisten the contents of his pie : far better, at all events, than the water and Worcester sauce which commonly is generally contented to use. A recipe for a really good " beef- steak pie" will be found in Menu No. 28, and the following notes concerning a " Domestic Pastij" will, I think, commend themselves to housekeepers who know what it is to find a few pounds of good meat on their hands without an idea of what to do with them. When staying on the Hills some time ago, a question one day arose touching what could be done with the remains of a fine saddle of mutton. There was a piece of good cold-boiled pickled pork in the house, about a pound of gravy beef could be spared from the soup meat, and a nice chicken was also available. I decided upon making a pie. Having called for the saddle, I began by cutting as many slices as I could from the meat that remained untouched at the tail end : each slice was trimmed free from burnt skin, &c., and laid upon a separate plate. About a pound and a half of these slices having been obtained, I next cut off all remnants of good lean that still adhered to the bones, and put them into a bowl. The bones were then broken up, and cast into a large stewpan with every atom of skin, fat, gristle, &c., that I could find left in the dish after the trimming operation. The whole saddle was thus disposed of. Into the stew-pan with the mutton bones, and scraps, I threw six shallots, a dozen pepper corns, the peel of a lime, two carrots cut up, a buncli of parsley, a coarse stalk of celery with its leaves, a table-spoonful of mushroom ketchup, a bouquet of sweet herbs, the aforesaid pound of gi^avy beef cut up, and all the trimmings of the chicken, — neck, legs, feet, pinions and giblets. Having been covered with warm water, and simmered gently, in about three hours these various ingredients produced a pint and a half of very excellent broth which was strained off, and set to cool. The lean remnants which had been saved in the bowl were now pounded witli a couple of anchovies in the mortar, and passed through the sieve. When the broth was quite cold, the fat was skimmed off, and a regular puree made with it and the pounded mutton. It was now time to pack the pie-dish, which was done in this way : — first a sprinkling of finely minced parsley, then a double layer of sliced mutton, over that a layer of sliced lean pork, another of mutton, and so on alternately, till there was just enough space left to accommodate the joints of the raw chicken : these were neatly disposed on the top, with little bits