The housekeeper's companion

Broiled: Slice the tomatoes without peeling. See that your fire is clear and hot. Put the slices in a wire toaster, and toast, carefully, like bread, or like broiling steak; turning often, to keep the juice in. Bring them to a nice, decided brown on both sides. Lay the slices in a dish, dropping on the middle of each one a bit of butter, and giving it a dust of salt and pepper. Send to the table as hot as possible. Baked: Scald, peel, and slice. Butter a baking dish. Have ready a cupful of fine cracker crumbs. Put a layer of tomatoes in the dish, sprinkle them with pepper and salt, the former cautiously; drop a bit of butter on each slice, and strew cracker crumbs over the whole. Proceed in this way until you have used all your tomatoes, or filled the dish. Finish with a good sprinkle of crumbs, and drop bits of butter over the top. Bake an hour. Canned tomatoes: May be stewed or baked in the same way as fresh ones. Cauliflower. — Pick off the leaves; trim down the stalk; put the cauliflower in cold water. An hour before dinner, put it into a large porcelain kettle, or nice tin boiler, with a great deal of boiling water, salted. Let it boil steadily, but not in a furious manner, to toss and bruise it, for one hour. Prepare for it a cream butter sauce, without the spicing of mace. Take up the cauliflower carefully, with a large vegetable skimmer or wire ladle. Put it in the dish for table, and pour over it the cream sauce. Cabbage. — Wash it, examining it carefully, and stripping off the old outside leaves. Let it lie for an hour or two, as convenient, in cold water. Put it into a large potful of boiling water. Have a plenty more of boiling water, to renew with, as below. When it has boiled half long enough — see "Time- Table," for old and young cabbages — turn away all the water, and fill the pot with more; throwing in two or three spoonfuls of salt. Let it boil the remainder of the time, then take it out carefully upon a drainer, let the water run from it, and serve. A drawn butter sauce is nice, poured over it. Or, when well boiled, chop it fine, put it in a saucepan, stir butter with it, and sprinkle in a little pepper, put it on the fire, and stir it till toiling hot again. Or, chop and dress like cauliflower, Fried Potatoes. — Pare and slice the potatoes thin — if sliced in small flakes they look more inviting than when cut in larger pieces — keep in ice water two or three hours; then drain them dry, or dry them on a crash towel, and drop them into boiling lard; when nearly done take them out with a skimmer and drain them. Let them get cold, and then drop them again into boiling lard, and fry until well done. This last operation causes them to swell up and puff out; sprinkle with salt, and serve hot — our recipe says; but many like them cold as a relish for tea or with cold meats. Saratoga Potatoes. — Peel good sized potatoes and cut as thin as your cabbage cutter will slice them, and throw into cold water. After soaking an hour wipe them dry, and drop into boiling lard until a light brown. Skim them out into a colander and sprinkle with salt while hot. A wire basket is better to boil in, if you have it.