Common-Sense Papers on Cookery

creatures of habit. We, as a rule, do what other people do, without reasoning whether it is right or wrong, good or bad, but simply because we shrink from drawing out a line for ourselves, or because we fear to be thought eccentric. For instance, take an ordinary party of, say, ten persons at dinner at the present season. We cling to soup, fish, entrées, and joint, and follow it up with game, served in the same course with sweets, the latter often being expensive to make, and uncared for by the majority. Suppose we change our dinner into, first, a little good clear soup; secondly, a good haunch of mutton, well kept and well cooked, and let this be followed by some game in sufficient quantity. When we are by ourselves, we own probably we could manage half a grouse after “a cut off the joint.” Why therefore not save the money too often wasted over second-rate entrées and sweets intended more to please the eye than the palate, and spend it in giving a dinner which, if not quite in the fashion, will at any rate please? Were this done, you may be certain of one point, that your house will be considered one at which it is worth while dining. A glass of Pomerey and Grem’s champagne, cold, but not frozen, at dinner, followed by a good bottle of claret, say Château Margeaux (which may be placed on a top shelf in the kitchen during the day to bring out its flavour), after dinner, will have the effect of sending home your guests enabled to say from their hearts, or at any rate their stomachs, “I have dined.” HOW TO COOK HARE. Once again has that season come round in which earth appears to be most lavish in her gifts to men. In our own country may be seen miles of ground on which rich golden grain waves in the autumn sun, waiting for the reaper’s hook, while in the present age, when the iron horse almost annihilates both time and distance, within a few hours’ journey