Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches

the utensils necessary for cake and pastry-making, (and for the other branches of cooking,) may be purchased in Philadelphia; at Gideon Cox's household store in Market street, No. 335, two doors below Ninth. Every thing of the sort will be found there in great variety, of good quality, and at reasonable prices.] As it is always desirable that, cake-making should be commenced at an early hour, it is well on the day previous to ascertain if all the materials are in the house; that there may be no unnecessary delay from sending or waiting for them in the morning. Wastefulness is to be avoided in every thing; but it is utterly impossible that cakes can be good (or indeed any thing else) without a liberal allowance of good materials. Cakes are frequently rendered hard, heavy, and uneatable by a misplaced economy in eggs and butter; or tasteless and insipid for want of their due seasoning of spice, lemon, &c. Use no flour but the best superfine; if the flour is of inferior. quality, the cakes will he heavy, ill-coloured, and unfit to eat. Even the best flour should always be sifted. No butter that is not fresh and good; should ever be put into cakes; for it will give them a disagreeable taste which can never be disguised by the other ingredients. Even when of excellent quality, the butter will be improved by washing it in cold, water, and squeezing and pressing it. Except for gingerbread, use only white sugar, (for the finest cakes the best loaf,) and have it pulverized by pounding it in a mortar, or crushing it on the paste-board with the rolling-pin. It should then be sifted. In mixing butter and sugar, sift the sugar into a deep pan, cut up the butter in it, set it in a warm place to soften, and then stir it very hard with the spaddle, till it becomes quite light, and of the consistence of cream. In preparing eggs, break them one at a time, into a saucer, that, in case there should be a bad one among them,