In foreign kitchens

Cream Fritters. — One quart of milk, one cup of sugar, one large spoonful of butter, half a teaspoonful of salt, a cupful of blanched and chopped almonds, and a tablespoonful of orange-water. Boil the milk, and thicken with a tablespoonful of cornstarch dissolved in a little cold water. Add the sugar, etc., and boil for five minutes. Then stir in the six beaten eggs; spread about an inch thick on an oiled platter, and allow to cool When cool, cut in strips an inch wide and three long; roll carefully in fine crumbs, dip in beaten egg, and then again in crumbs, and fry in boiling lard. Drain on brown paper, dust with powdered sugar, and serve hot. Very delicious. Macedoine of Preserved Fruits. — Take six green-gages, six apricots, a cupful of preserved cherries and one of strawberries, and three bananas cut in bits. Two oranges may also be added. Have ready one quart of wine jelly or an orange jelly, and pour it an inch in depth in a glass dish. When cold and set, add the fruits, and pour over the rest of the jelly. Let all stand on ice for some hours, and serve in the dish. TT is a fashion with some Americans who have taken a three months' scamper over the Continent to express profound contempt on their return for any methods but their own. They have passed from one hotel to another, each owning its French cook, and none giving any real idea of the actual cuisine of the country, the family habits, or even the special dishes honored as national. Hotel cookery in any case has much the same flavor the world over, and the larger the hotel the more absolute the sameness of this flavor. Even in a longer stay, and in a possible housekeeping for one's self, there is little or no attempt to handle the resources of the country as the native does, and to discover what it is worth while to adopt and what to reject. There is continual wrestle to fit the strange order of things with an Ameri- can custom, or even to discard the new altogether and insist on cleaving absolutely to the old and familiar. And it must be admitted that the old has many advantages; that the American formed under different skies and far different conditions has needs recognized by brethren across the sea, and must be allowed much that to them is not only unnecessary, but unknown. Chronic dissatisfaction comes to be the atmosphere of travelling Americans, indignant at the frequent assumption that we are a nation of barbarians where food is concerned, and more indignant at the placid acceptation of this statement as true by those Americans who have denationalized themselves, and regard their own country as quite too crude and unformed for intelligent beings to tolerate. Between these two extremes the American who considers whatever good thing the world may hold as his by right, wavers for a time, finding each side an enemy to any real knowledge of what is sought. To secure such knowledge one must escape from all Americans save those of like mind, and this, when more and more thousands are