Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

All my tarts throughout the year are made with the crust baked apart, and the fruit, stewed previously, juicy and cold. Shortly before dinner make the paste called in ' Dainty Dishes ' ' crisp paste ' for tarts ; crumple up kitchen paper into a mound the height you wish your crust to be, place it in the pie-dish — the round-shaped dishes are the prettiest — cover this with a clean sheet of buttered paper, lay your paste over this, bake in the usual way. When done, lift off the crust, take out the paper, pour in the fruit (which can be iced, if desired), put a little raw white of egg round the rim of the pie-dish, and replace the crust. In this way an orange or a strawberry tart can be made without cooking the fruit at all, except in the usual compote way of pouring boiling syrup over it. Towards the end of February is the best time for making Orange Marmalade (see ' Dainty Dishes '), as the Seville oranges in London are then at their best. In all cases when old jam pots, glasses, &c., are used for pre- serving, it is very desirable to wash them thoroughly in clean water, avoiding all soda or soap, and, when dry, powder them with a little sulphur and wipe clean. If soda is used in anything connected with fruit, it has an injurious chemical action. The following are the translations of a few careful receipts which we^e written out by a very excellent French chef. They belong to so entirely different a cuisine from our ordinary modest and economical receipts, that I think they may be not without interest to some people. It is 28 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN worth noting how, when a really good French cook wishes to instruct, he is careful to go into the minutest details. Pot au feu Soup. — Proportions : 15 Ibs. of beef, 5Jlbs. of veal, 1 chicken, 2| gallons of water, 3 fineicarrots, 1 big turnip, 1 large onion, a bunch of parsley, half a head of celery, a parsnip, 2 cloves, and some salt. Remove the fat and tie up the beef and the veal, putting them in a large saucepan ; fill the saucepan with cold water to within a little more than an inch from the brim, place the saucepan on the fire with the lid off, add some salt, and let it boil till the scum shows on the surface ; remove it with a skimmer. As soon as it seems inclined to boil over, add a few spoonfuls of cold water, so as to make the scum accumulate as much as possible. When at last it boils violently, drop in the vegetables ; remove the saucepan to one side of the fire, so that it shall boil only on one side ; put on the lid, and let it boil undisturbed, evenly and regularly. After two hours remove the veal. An hour later add the chicken, and, three hours after, strain the soup, without stirring it up, through a strainer on to a napkin stretched over a receptacle large enough to contain the soup. The soup may be skimmed before or after straining. This stock does for making any kind of soup, Julienne, Brunoise, Croute au pot, and for all purees of vegetables. Consomme*.— Consomme means the foundation of the soup ; this foundation ought always to be clear, lightly coloured, and, above all, strong.