Miss Parloa's kitchen companion

Put the water and half a capful of sugar on the stove in a saucepan, and boil for ten minutes. Pare and core the apples, and cook them gently in the boiling water and sugar until they begin to grow tender, — say for eight or ten minutes. Be careful not to cook them so long nor so rapidly that they will break. Remove them from the saucepan, and let them drain ; then put them into a pudding-dish that will hold about two quarts, and after sprinkling them with one-fourth of a cupful of sugar and a little nutmeg, place the dish in a moderate oven. Break the eggs into a bowl, and add the salt and the remaining sugar and nutmeg. Beat the mixture thoroughly with a spoon, and when it gets thoroughly beaten, add the milk and strain the mixture. Take the pudding-dish from the oven, and pour the custard over it, being careful not to displace the apples. Return to the oven, and bake for half an hour ; then put away to cool. At serving-time put half a teaspoonful of bright jelly in the centre of each apple. Partially cooking the apples before the custard is added gives a much finer pudding than the old method of pour- ing the custard over the uncooked fruit. It takes longer to cook the apples than the custard, and if both were baked for the same time, one or the other would be spoiled. The sugar and water in which the fruit is partially cooked may be used in stewing apples or pears. *Red Gro. The materials are : a pint of any kind of red fruit juice, one quart of water, one cupful of sago, one-fourth of a teaspoonful of salt, and if strawberry or raspberry juice be used, one cupful of sugar ; or if currant juice be used, one cupful and a half of sugar. Wash the sago, and let it soak over night in the quart of cold water. In the morning put it in the double boiler with the water in which it was soaked, and cook for one hour. At the end of that time add the fruit juice, salt, and sugar, and cook half an hour longer. Wet a smooth earthen dish with cold water, and turn the rod gro into it. Let it stand in a cold place for three or four hours. At serving-time turn out on a flat dish, and heap whipped cream around it; or if it be inconvenient to provide whipped cream, serve with plain cream. In winter and spring this dish may be prepared with a pint of the red syrup that is usually left from any red preserve ; or it may be made by the addition of a tumbler of currant jelly to the cooked sago. In case either the juice or the jelly be used, only a little sugar will be needed. * Tapioca Cream Pudding. These are the ingredients needed : three pints of milk, one pint of cold water, one teacupful of tapioca, half a teaspoonful of salt, the rind and juice of an orange, three eggs, and a cupful and a quarter of powdered sugar.