For a little home dinner.

Creme do viz aux haricots verts.

Ragout de pomfret

Cancton aux petits pois.

Poxnmes de terre nouvelles.*

Podolong-cai au jus.

"Pudding" aux figues.

Fromage, hors d'oeuvres.

Dessert.

1. - Make your stock for soup as usual. Boil a tea-cupful of rice till tender, work it through the sieve : amalgamate the pulp so obtained with the soup gravy by butter and flour as described for purees. Cut into dice a handful of jugged French beans, stir the dice into the soup as it thickens, and add a coffee-cupful of milk, with which the yolk of an egg has been mixed, off the fire, just before serving. The milk of a few pounded sweet almonds may be mixed with the rice pulp if the flavour be liked.

2.- This is a very useful recipe, practicable with all fish, which I specially commend to notice. Take a cold boiled pomfret (in this case) remove the skin and cut the fish into fillets of a nice length, dust them with pepper and salt, and put them aside. Slice finely half a Bombay onion, and a small carrot, fry the slices, till just colouring, in an ounce of butter, now add a pint of milk and water, two-thirds milk to one-third water, all the fish bones and trimmings, a few pepper corns, an anchovy, a blade of mace, and a pinch of salt; boil this up and simmer it afterwards till you have extracted the flavour of your ingredients : now strain the liquor, and thicken it as for a sauce blanche, gently heating your fillets of fish in the same: garnish with little bits of red chilli (cut into dice, and sprinkled over the fillets) and serve. The point here lies in the flavouring of the white sauce in which you warm your fish : so do not omit any thing I have mentioned.

* " Mock new potatoes."

Rice puree with French beaus.

Ragout of pomfret.

3. - "First catch your duckling" eh ? well, I know they are not easy to get, but let those who keep ducks in their poultry yard try one before the breast-bone forms hard. The bone should be scarcely stronger than gristle if the bird be young enough. Roast, and do not stuff the duckling, let the basting be frequent, and froth the breast up nicely to finish with : serve, accompanied by green peas, and cook the potatoes according to any of the recipes given at page 136.

N. B. - If your cook have a habit, as some have, of serving the giblets of the duck in the gravy round the bird, put an end to it forthwith; - it is one of those quaint relics of barbarism which still cling to certain Indian kitchens.

4. - This vegetable, known as the " snake vegetable," cut into convenient lengths, boiled, drained, its seeds removed, and the pieces finally heated up in a good brown gravy, is well worth trying when vegetables are as scarce as they always are in the hot weather. A dust of grated cheese over each piece may be given without fear.

Duckling and green peas.

Podolong-cai in gravy.

5.- Take a quarter of a pound of finely grated bread-crumbs, half a pound of minced dried figs, three ounces of sugar, six ounces of chopped suet, and a little grated nutmeg. Mix a tea-spoonful of Yeatman's baking powder with an ounce of flour, add this to the other ingredients with four eggs well beaten, moisten with a little milk sufficiently to form a firm paste, turn the mixture into a buttered mould, and boil for three hours.

Lime sauce. - Put three table-spoonfuls of sugar into a sauce-pan with a breakfast-cupful of water, and the very finely peeled rind of a lime, simmer for twenty minutes, then add the juice of two limes and a liqueur glass of any liqueur, brandy, or rum, strain and serve. A drop or two of cochineal will improve the colour of the sauce.

Nougat. Blanch a pound of almonds, and cut each lengthwise into thin narrow pieces, lay them on a dish in front of the fire, or in the oven (with the door open), to get perfectly dry; melt in a sugar boiler 1/2 lb of loaf sugar; when the sugar is a rich brown, put in the almonds, mix them well but carefully together, and you will have a soft paste, which will harden when cold. Dip some small moulds into some very hot-water, slightly but thoroughly oil them with melted butter; put some of the mixture in one of them, and with the handle of a tea-spoon previously buttered, spread it out so as completely to line the mould ; trim the edges, and when cold, turn out the nougat. Having made a number of cases in the same way, serve them with whipped cream or sweetmeats inside each. The nougat should be very thin. Any kind of mould, large or small, may be used, and many fanciful devices may be worked with this composition. The almond should be cut smaller for intricate designs, and in all cases the work must be done quickly, for the sugar soon becomes too stiff to be spread into position.

Fig pudding.

Endive.

Endive (chicoree,) as grown in Southern India, is perhaps better when cooked than when presented raw in salad, for it lacks the crispness which the plant acquires at home in the winter. Endives should be trimmed for cooking by picking off the outside leaves, and cutting off the green tips. The heads should then be severed by a cut across the stalk, detaching all the leaves therefrom. Thus every leaf can be examined and cleaned. When this has been done, and the leaves have been drained dry, cast them into a roomy vessel full of boiling water with half an ounce of salt. Unlike spinach, which merely takes five minutes, endives must be boiled for twenty-five. When tender, drain, press out the water, and chop fine on a clean board, finishing as explained for spinach. If you simmer the endive leaves in consomme for two hours, and then increase the fire, stirring till the leaves have absorbed the broth, and finally moistening them with some rich bechamel and a pat of butter, you will have the correct foundation for a blanquette a la Talleyrand, i.e., neat pieces of cooked chicken heated up in the endive sauce.