Cooking for profit

cents a plate according to my own showing; whereas, for two or three weeks they ran from seven to eleven cents only, and why the same cheap scale could not be always preserved. There is no reason why. He is in the right. Tencent dinners such a s we had three weeks back could be continued all the season, and give satisfaction. However, I have not been under any instruction or restraint in this matter. If the owner of the place has had any thought about the matter, it has probably been only to see what I would do, and in what ways this summer's style would differ from the household style of keeping up a table. John, the keeper, has been comparing the frugal management of provisions this summer, which leaves him no perquisites with the waste of former years, which gave him a large pork crop, and he thinks it extreme niggardliness. The manager, who was not here last year, is comparing the seventeen -cents-a-plate of to-day, with the ten-cents-a-plate of last month, and it seems to him a change to extravagance. There is no room for a reasonable doubt that there was much wasted last year through want of knowing what to do with it, and through cooking too much as it lakes to make our most expensive meals now. The extravagance of the dinners, such as it is, arises from the use of more meat in the soups and sauces, the use of sea-fish, which the butcher sends according to a custom which prevails, at eleven cents, and which costs 12^, delivered; whereas, the lake fish costs but 9; and the cooking in fillets entails a loss of bulk and requires more pounds gross for a given number, of people than if cooked plain, with the bones in. There has ibeen an indulgence in a few cans of pineapple, and other fruits in syrup, a few .olives, a bottle of wine, a mmcing up of pickles, a rather more lavish use of eggs and crackers for frying,^ and of lard for the same, a little waste in the matter of potatoes in fancy forms, the new potatoes being dearer than the old, and all the odd cents counted up together have swelled the sum total. There has not been a corresponding increase in the cost of breakfast and supper, the latter, indeed, being half made up of the meats and other remains from dinner, and being quite an inexpensive meal. But what are we here for? Nut alone to see how cheaply one summer hotel can be kept, but to find out how much it costs to live well. The custom mentioned in connection with the butcher is, that one who supplies a number of hotels occasionally get a refrigerator car full of special kinds of provisions, which he sends around to his first-class customers, without waiting for the order, assuming that a novely will be welcome in the height of the season. Dinner. August 9. Soup — Pot au fere (6 qts 20 cents.) Sliced cucumbers (on table 12 cents.) Stewed codfish and potatoes (18 cents.) Corned tongue and cabbage (^ tongue 15, cabbage 5, 20 cents.) Roast beef (piece loin, 2^ lbs 30 cents.) Breast of lamb, a la jardinie`re (2 briskets, 4 lbs 32 cents.) Ragout of beef, a la Creole (meat from soup pot 20, with trimmings 30 cents.) Macaroni au gratin (No. 629; 12 cents.) Summer beets 5, string beans 8, corn 15, rice 7, potatoes 15 (45 cents.) Baked Indian pudding (cheap, 20 cents.) Apple pie, rhubarb pie (4 pies, 28 cents.) Lemon ice cream (2 qts milk, starch, eggs, etc., 38 cents.)