The hearthstone; or, Life at home

Egg-baskets (a nice breakfast dish). — Make them the day after having roast turkey or chicken for dinner. Boil six eggs hard, remove the shells, cut neatly in halves, and extract the yolks. Rub them to a paste, with some melted butter, pepper and salt, and set aside. Pound the minced meat of the cold fowl finely, and mix with the egg-paste, moistening with a little melted butter or gravy left from the roast. Cut off a slice from the bottom of the hollowed white, to make them stand ; fill with the paste, arrange close together on a flat dish, and pour over the rest of the gravy left from the roast, heated boiling hot and enriched by a few spoonfuls of cream. To keep Eggs Fresh. — One of the best means of preserving eggs is the following : Select good fresh eggs and pack endwise in a mixture of equal parts of fine dry charcoal and salt (cold). Keep in a cool, dry place until required for use. A thin coating of gum or a trace of oil will prevent loss of moisture through the shell. The best time for preserving eggs is from July to September. For Testing the Age of Eggs. — Dissolve 120 grammes of common salt in a liter of water. An egg put in this solution on the day it is laid will sink to the bottom ; one a day old will not reach quite to the bottom of the vessel; an egg three days old will swim in the liquid; while one more than three days old will swim on the surface. Omelet. — Five or six eggs will make a good-sized omelet ; break them into a basin, and beat them well with a fork, and add a saltspoonful of salt ; have some parsley ready chopped ; beat it well up with the eggs ; then take four ounces of fresh butter, and break half of it into large bits, and put it into the omelet, and the other half into a veryclean frying-pan ; when it is melted, pour in the omelet, and stir it with a spoon till it begins to set, then turn it up all round the edges, and when it is of a nice brown it is done. The safest way to take it out is to put a plate on the omelet, and turn the pan upside-down ; serve it on a hot dish ; it should never be done till just wanted. Tomato Omelet (i). — Tomatoes, thickened with bread-crumbs, seasoned with salt, pepper, chopped parsley and sugar ; add one egg to every pint of this mixture. Sprinkle bread-crumbs over the top, and bake forty minutes; a nice dinner vegetable. Tomato Omelet (2). — Beat up six eggs, mix two tablespoonfuls of flour with a little milk, and add pepper and salt to taste. Peel and chop very fine four tomatoes, stir all together, and fry in butter. Oyster Omelet is made in the same way, using oysters instead of tomatoes. Washington Omelet. — Make four omelets of three eggs each, adding to one two chopped, tart apples ; to another, chopped, cold boiled ham ; to another, an assortment of fine herbs — a small pinch of each — and the fourth omelet plain, or with asparagus or cauliflower, in their season. Serve on the same dish, one lapping over another, and very hot. Rum Omelet. — Make a plain omelet, with a little sugar added, and when on the table pour a gill or so of rum over it, set fire to it, let it burn as long as it can, taking slowly, but constantly, with a silver spoon, the rum from the sides, and pouring it on the middle while it is burning, and until it dies out by itself; then serve immediately.