Culinary jottings

fillet of veal, and is nice whether hot or cold. Not a greasy mess, pale brown in colour, and lumpy, which, at the first cut of the knife, oozes out, and encumbers the dish in a most untempting manner. In order to be sure of making the real thing, if you have not (as you ought to have easily enough at Madras) the plants themselves growing in pots handy, see that you have a bottle of dried thyme, and one of marjoram, and a good bunch of fresh curly parsley, which should also be growing in boxes. Having these ready, work as follows : — Pare a good sized lime as finely as possible avoiding the slightest particle of white pith, and mince the peel as small as possible : weigh six ounces of dry, well sifted, stale bread-crumbs : measure a dessert-spoonful of chopped thyme (green) and one of marjoram (green), or take a table-spoonful of the dried leaves powdered — half and half : you must powder the leaves to get rid of atoms of stalk and stick : mince the parsley fine to the extent of a heaped up table-spoonful : chop up three ounces of fresh beef-suet, or butter if suet cannot be got : mix all these together with two spoons in a large dish, and dust the whole well with salt and pepper, lastly, binding the mixture with three well-beaten eggs : work this together, and the stuffing will be fit to use. Much depends upon the fine mincing of all the ingredients, and their thorough incorporation : the suet should be chopped as finely as possible. The colour will be, of course, a deep green provided you use the quantities of green herbs I have given : supposing, however, that you have only dried herbs, and that you cannot get fresh parsley ; why not secure the colour by a good spoonful of spinach-greening, it is almost tasteless, and the colour is a great thing in stuffing. This, carefully made, is Martha's ordinary veal, or turkey stuffing, and ought to taste, just as nice here as that which we so well remember at home. In mincing parsley, and all green herbs, be careful that, after washing them well, the leaves are well dried in a cloth : if chopped wet, the juice escapes, and the mince is never finely and evenly granulated. Forcemeats are, of course, added to, and perhaps improved, by chopped ham, tongue, liver, mushrooms, bacon, a little anchovy, a casual oyster, and, of course, truffles. The addition of these things should, however, be thoughtfully carried out, and the proportions on no account left at haphazard to the tender mercy of the average Ramasamy. The mixture which tradition has handed down to the Anglo-Indian kitchen for the stuffing of ducks and geese is nearly as disagreeable as that for the fowl. Whilst the latter may be described as a consolidated and greasy relation of the " bread poultice" that I denounced, when treating of " bread sauce," the former owes its flavour to violent onion, crude sage, and slices of half-boiled potato, mixed together lumpily and lubricated with some chopped fat. Let me speedily tell you that potnto has no place whatever in the best duck stuffing, and that the crude taste you dislike so much arises from the sage being chopped raw, and the onion being a common one instead of the mild kind called " Bombay," or " Bellary."