The household gas cookery book

Fried.— Have ready a sufficient quantity of boiling fat or boiling oil. Throw them in a handful at a time, and shake the potatoes about until they are a nice light brown colour. Remove them from the fat with a wire spoon or basket, and allow them to drain. Sprinkle them with salt, and serve immediately. if they are allowed to stand after being cooked, they become soft. They should be served on a dish paper or folded serviette. Sprinkle over with salt and a little finely chopped parsley. Tomatoes. Cut into thin slices some tomatoes. Have ready some breadcrumbs. Put some of the tomatoes in a dish sprinkled with breadcrumbs pepper and salt to taste, and a few pieces of butter Continue these layers of tomatoes, butter, pepper, and salt until the pie dish is full, finishing with breadcrumbs, and bake in a rather slow oven. It will be found to be a very delicious dish. Spanish Onions.— After having boiled them for an hour, place them on a tin, and put a piece of butter on each. Bake until quite soft. Fancy Potatoes.— Boil 2 lb. of potatoes, rub them through a sieve, or mash them in a basin, add 2 ozs. of butter, J teaspoonful of salt, little pepper, and one egg. Mix this well together, flour a board, and form the potatoes into fancy shapes— cottage loaves and three-cornered cakes; brush over with another egg, put on a greased tin, and bake a nice brown ; serve hot, * >36 t SALADS. No Frenchman would consider the dinner to be perfect unless it included a perfect salad, and his idea of a successful dinner must include a successful salad also. A really good salad is rare in the ordinary household, although many persons think it means just the mixing of a little oil, a little vinegar, of salt and pepper each a little, an onion, and such herbs as fancy may select, and condiments to taste. To be appetis¬ ing, it must be fresh and crisp, with none of its in¬ gredients perceptibly dominant, so that it is not only pleasing to the taste, but soothing to the digestion. No hard and fast rule can be laid down for salad¬ making; it must proceed from practice, a correct taste, and a minute attention to detail, and that happy touch which care and experience alone can give. There are, however, certain broad lines which may be specified, the observance of which will help the most inexperienced to make a good salad. In every season of the year there are products of the vegetable world ready, with the aid of the castor, to be converted from their crude form into the most palatable and refreshing delicacy. In spring and summer, radishes, garden cress, and French lettuces, watercress, and endives in autumn, chicory and corn salad in winter, tomatoes, cucumber, carrots, beets, beans, and celery, including a number of herbs of bulbous plants, make it impossible for any excuse to be forthcoming that the supper or dinner table shall lack one of its greatest attractions. A zest is imparted by a good salad which is otherwise unattainable. Savarin says: "Salad refreshes without weakening, and comforts without irritating. ” If vinegar has been used too liberally, or the lettuce is rather tough or stringy, or corn salad is being used, a little potato might be added with advantage, but with brittle, tender cos or endive the addition of either potato or egg is unnecessary.