Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

here, they found ox-tails were thrown away and were very cheap. They immediately utilised them, and made the excellent ox-tail soup which we use in England to this day. The black cooks of America, I am told, never spoil good materials, and they cook good things excellently. The English have a peculiar gift for taking the taste out of the best materials that are to be found in the world. A few terrible tricks of the trade are answerable for a good deal of this — iron pots and spoons; soda thrown into many things ; water poured over roasted meat for gravy ; soups cleared with the white of eggs. This will spoil the best soup in the world, not only taking away all flavour of meat and vegetables, but supplying a taste that is not unlike the smell of a dirty cloth. Of late, in the effort to keep pace with foreign cooking, things in England have grown too messy, and I sometimes regret the real Old English dishes of my childhood. The system of trying to make one thing look like another is very objectionable, I think, and wanting in good taste. But I must return to my maigre receipts. The details can be found in ' Dainty Dishes.' Vol-au-vent au Maigre. — Make a high Vol-au-vent crust. Prepare some quenelles made of fish — any white fish would do (lemon-soles, whiting, haddock, gurnet, &c.) ;; some white bottled mushrooms preserved in salt, not vinegar (this is most important) ; some small pieces of boiled fish. Mix these together in a white sauce made of butter, flour (slightly cooked first, but not coloured) , then ?add the milk, warm the whole together, and pour it into the crust. A rather nice cake for luncheon can be made as follows : — Take three eggs, put them into the scale and weigh against them three equal parts of flour, sugar, and butter. Then break the eggs and put the yelks into a basin, melt the butter, add the flour and sugar, and mix a 82 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN the whole. At the last moment add the whites of the eggs, beat slightly, and put it into the oven in a round flat tin with a thin rim. Serve it on a large round plate. Fresh-water fish, so rare now in England, though the traces of tanks and ponds are always to be found in the neighbourhood of old abbeys and monasteries, are still much eaten in the country in France. Pike and carp marinaded are constantly seen at table. Marinading is far too little done in England; it is most useful for many things — hares, venison, beef, and grouse — and it preserves the meat for some time, if that is what is wanted. It is described in ' Dainty Dishes,' but I give you also the following receipt : — German Receipt for Roast Hare.— Take a bottle of common white wine (or any remnants of already opened bottles) ; cut up onions, carrots, herbs, bay-leaf, a clove or two ; and pour the whole over the raw hare in a shallow baking-pan, basting it well every few hours in a cool place for two or three days. Then prepare the hare. Take off the head, lard it well, and put it into the roasting-pan with a little dripping and more onions, carrots, herbs, salt, and pepper. When roasted, take it out of the oven, pour off all the grease, and replace it by half a breakfast- cupful of thick sour cream, which is to be mixed with the gravy at the bottom of the pan. Eeplace it in the oven, baste well with the mixture, and serve just as it is, pouring the sauce over the hare.