The thorough good cook

It lies heavy on the stomach, and is not easily digested, When children are thirsty, and curds and whey are not procurable, I think that in summer they might with advantage drink lemonade, thoroughly cooled, but not actually iced. I don't mean the so-called lemonade sold in bottles. This drink is, as a rule, only so much aerated water with an infusion of acetic acid. Real lemonade — which is made in the Italian penny ice-shops far better than it is in the houses of polite society — should be made from boiling water poured on slices of real lemon, well sweetened, and cooled first by placing wet cloths round the bottle, and next by surrounding it by pounded ice till the refrigerating, not the freezing, point has been attained. F 2 How to make Coffee. On the principle of every man thinking his own geese swans, I believe that we make as good coffee in our house at Brighton as is to be met with in most middle-class families where the master and mistress know something about cookeiy ; so I will tell you in a very few words how our coffee is made. "We allow a tablespoonful and a half for each breakfast-cup ; and we use the best coffee that we can get. Formerly we had a coffee-mill, and ground the so-called beans, which are really the seeds of the coffee-berry, at home ; but now we are content to use good colonial coffee, with a very small quantity of chicory in it. To make the delicious beverage, we use that simple percolator of block tin which I have seen used for fifty years. In the upper cylinder of the percolator we place the coffee, closing the top with a perforated block-tin disc to prevent the aroma from escaping during the process of infusion and the water from falling with a rush on the coffee, then we pour in a sufficiency of boiling water, and the infusion percolates into the lower cylinder, and is in due time poured out from the spout, strong, and clear as a bell. That is all. Stay : the percolator must be kept from boiling again, which would be fatal to its flavour and its clearness ; but it must be placed on a "hot plate," to prevent it from becoming tepid. Lukewarm coffee is an abomination which should be administered only to spiteful cats and human miscreants. In case you should think my coffee recipe too rough-and-ready, I have given a number of recipes for the making of it,* culled from long acknowledged authorities on the subject. There are a hundred and one ways of making coffee ; but I have found ours palatable not only to ourselves, but to our friends. In the morning, * See pp. 452-454.