Miss Parloa's kitchen companion

Put three pints of boiling water into a large stew-pan. Mix five table-spoonfuls of flour with one cupful of cold water, and stir into the boiling water. Now add half a teaspoonful of pepper and one table-spoonful of salt. Let the liquid simmer until the chicken is taken from the oven ; and when the chicken is taken out, turn it into the stew-pan containing this gravy. Cover, and simmer gently for two hours and a half. At the end of that time taste the dish, to see if it needs any more salt and pepper. Add, at any rate, one teaspoonful of minced parsley. Stir the stew well, and after adding the dumplings, cook for eight minutes. Serve the chicken, dumplings, and gravy together on a large meat-dish. Norfolk Dumplings. — Use one pint of flour, one gill of milk, two eggs, one table-spoonful of melted butter, one teaspoonful of salt, and one of baking-powder. Mix the salt and baking-powder with the flour, and rub all through a sieve. Beat the eggs — yolks and whites separately — until very light, and add the milk to them. Pour the mixture upon the flour. • Add the butter, and beat well. Drop the batter into the chicken stew by table-spoonfuls. Cover the pot closely, and cook for eight minutes. These dumplings will not be light and spongy, like those made with soda and cream-of-tartar, but will be tender and savory. Chicken Pie. For a dish holding three quarts use two chickens weighing about eight pounds, half the quantity of paste given in the rule for chopped puff paste, three pints of chicken stock, four table-spoonfuls of butter, four of flour, two slices of carrot, half a large onion, a bay leaf, a sprig of parsley, a bit of mace, and salt and pepper to suit the taste, — perhaps half a teaspoonful of pepper and three teaspoonfuls of salt. After cleaning and halving the chickens, put them into a kettle, cover them with boiling water, and place them where they will simmer until tender. If they be a year old they will need to be cooked for an hour and a half. Let them cool in the water; then free them of skin, and cut into pieces suitable for serving. Put these pieces into the pie-dish, sprinkling each layer with salt and pepper, — about half the pepper and two teaspoonfuls of salt being used. Now put the butter into a saucepan, and beat it until soft. Add the flour, and beat until the mixture is light and creamy. Next add the vegetables, spice, and herbs, besides three pints of the water in which the chickens were boiled. Heat slowly to the boiling-point, and set back where the mixture will simmer for fifteen minutes. Add the remaining pepper, and a teaspoonful of salt; then strain the sauce over the meat. Roll out the paste, having it a little larger than the top of the dish. Cut it with a knife in the centre, that steam may escape, and place it over the chicken, turning the edge into the dish. Bake in a moderate oven for an hour and a quarter, and serve hot. It gives the pie a rather more festive appearance if the paste trimmings be rolled thin, cut in ornamental shapes, and disposed on the cover of the pie before baking. Chicken Pie to be Served Cold. .