SHELL-FISH

and replace the crust and serve at once*; or line dish with a good

puff-paste, place an extra layer around the edge, and bake in a brisk

oven ; fill with oysters, season with pepper, salt, and one table-spoon

butter, sprinkle slightly with flour, and cover with a thin crust of

paste ; bake quickly ; when the top crust is done, the pie will be

ready to take up. Serve promptly, as the crust quickly absorbs the

gravy. Some like this cold for picnics or traveling. — Mrs, Carrie

Oyster Pickles.

To every quart of liquor add a teii-spoon of black pepper, a pod

of red pepper broken in bits, two blades of mace, a tea-spoon salt,

two dozen cloves, and half a pint of best vinegar, add the oysters

and simmer gently for a few minutes, take out and put in small

jars; then boil the pickle, skim it, and pour over them. Keep

them in a dark, cool place, and when a jar is opened, use up its

contents as quickly as possible. Oysters pickled thus will keep

good four or five weeks.

Oyster Roll.

Cut a round piece, say six inches across, from the top of a well- baked round loaf of bread, remove the inside from the loaf, leaving crust half an inch thick; make a rich oyster stew, and put in the loaf first a layer of it, then of bread-crumbs, then oysters, and so on ; place cover over the top, glaze the loaf with the beaten yolk fif sua ftgg, and place in oven for a few moments. Serve very hot.

Raw Oysters.

Wash the shells, open, detaching the flat shell, loosen from the deep shell, but leave them in it, and serve half dozen on a plate, with a quarter of lemon in center. Eat with salt, pepper and lemon juice or vinegar.

In serving them without the shells the most attractive way is in H dish of ice, made by freezing water in a tin form shaped like a salad bowl, or in a block of ice from which a cavity has been melted with a hot flat-iron. They should first be drained well in a colander, sprinkled with plenty of pepper and salt, and placed on the ice and let remain in a cool place for half an hour or imtil time of serving.

A simpler and equally delicious way is to drain well, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and place the dish on ice or in a dish of cold

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ivater for half an hour before serving, adding bits of ice. Serve with horse'radish, Chili sauce, slices of lemon, or simply vinegar.

Oysters in the Shell. Open the shells, keeping the deepest ones for use. Melt some butter, season with minced parsley and pepper. When slightly cooled, roll each oyster in it; using care that it drips but little, and lay in the shells. Add to each shell a little lemon juice, cover with grated bread-crumbs, place in a baking-pan and bake in a quick oven ; just before they are done, add a little salt. Serve in tiie

Oyster Spew. Put the liquor from the oysters on the stove, let boil, skim, and

season with butter and pepper, add oysters, let come to a hoU only,

eeason with salt and serve. This is pronounced a ** royal stew.**

Steamed Oysters. Lay some oysters in the shell in some air-tight vessel, placing the tipper shell downward so the liquor will not run out when they open. Set them over a pot of boiling water (where they will get the steam), and boil hard for twenty minutes; if the oysters are open they are done ; if not, steam till they do open. Serve at once and eat hot, with salt and a bit of butter. Or, wash and drain one quart select oysters, put in pan and place in steamer over boiling water, cover and steam till oysters are plump with edges ruffled; place in heated dish with butter, pepper and salt, and serve.

Walled Oysters. Make a wall one and one-half inches high and three-quarters wide of one quart nicely mashed and seasoned potatoes, just inside raised edge of platter, glaze it by covering with beaten egg and placing in oven for a few minutes. Place the liquor from one quart oysters in porcelain kettle, let boil, skim well, then^dd oysters seasoned with salt, boil up once, skim out oysters (milk or water can be added to the liquor, then seasoned with butter and pepper, and served as soup), and add them to a cream dressing made by putting a tea-cup rich cream, butter size of half an egg, and a little pepper and tea- spoon salt in a pan placed within a vessel of boiling water ; when hot add two ounces of flour mixed smooth in some cream or milk, and let cook till thickened, then place oysters and dressing within the potato and serve immediately.

To make Dutritious, healthful and palatable soup, with flavors properly commingled, is an art which requires study and practice, but it is surprising from what a scant allotment of material a deli- cate and appetizing dish may be produced. The best base for soup is lean uncooked meat, a pound of meat to a quart of water, to which may be added chicken, turkey, beef, or mutton bones well broken up; a mixture of beef, mutton and veal, with a bit of ham bone, all cut fine, makes a higher flavored soup than any single meat ; the legs of all meats are rich in gelatine, an important con- stituent of soup. For white stock use veal or fowls instead of beef.

Soups, which make the principal part of a meal, should be richer than those which simply precede a heavier course of meats, etc.

When remnants of cooked meats are used, chop fine, crush the bones, add a ham bone or bit of bam or salt pork (two or three cubic inches) and all ends of roasts and fatty parts, and the brown &t of the roast ; make the day previous to use ; strain, set away over night, skim off* the fat (which clarify and save for drippings), and it is ready to heat and serve.

When soup is desired for a first course, daily, a soup-kettle should be especially provided, with a faucet to draw off* the clear soup to be seasoned for each day ; and all the bones and bits of meat left after dinner can be thrown into the kettle, also bits of vegetables and bread, and the gravies that are left from roast meats and cut- lets. In this way there will be nothing lost, and the soups can be varied by seasonings and thickenings of different kinds. Every two or three days, however, the contents of the kettle should be turned out, after all the liquid hai« been drawn off, and the kettle

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irafihed dean and scalded, for if this is not attended to, the fsoups will soon lose their piquant flavor and become stale.

In using fresh meat throw the pieces as cut into the required quantity of cold water and let stand until the juices of the meat begin to color it, then put on to boil ; in this way the juices of the meat are more readily drawn out. The soup is done when the meat is juiceless.

The best herbs are sage, thyme, sweet marjoram, tarragon, mint, sweet basil, parsley, bay-leaves, cloves, mace, celery-seed and onions. Plant the seed of any of the seven flrst-mentioned in little boxes OD the window sill, or in a sunny spot in the yard. Grather and dry them as follows: parsley and tarragon should be dried in June and July, just before flowering; mint in June and July; thyme, marjoram and savory in July and August ; basil and sage in August and September ; all herbs should be gathered in the sunshine, and dried by artificial heat ; their flavor is best preserved by keeping them in air-tight tin cans, or in tightly-corked glass bottles.

Seasonings for soups may be varied to suit tastes. The simplest may have only pepper and salt, while the richest may have a little of every savor, so delicately blended that no one is conspicuous. The best seasoning is that which is made up of the smallest quan' tity from each of many spices. No measure can be given, because the good soup-maker must be a skillful taster. There must be a flavor of salt; that is, the water must not be insipid (less is needed if bits of salt meat are used), there must be a warm tone from the pepper, but not the taste of pepper; in short, the spicing should be delicate rather than profuse. Those who like rank flavors may add them to suit their coarse and uneducated palates. For brown soups the dark spices may be used ; for white, mace, aromatic seeds, cream and curry. Many herbs, either fresh or dried, are used as seasoning, and all the choice catsups and sauces.

Rice, sago, pearled barley, vermicelli, macaroni, etc., are desir- able additions to meat soups. The flrst three are used in the pro- I portion of half a tea-cup to three quarts of soup ; wash and soak. ^ Rice requires half to three-quarters of an hour, boiling in the soup; sago cooks in fifteen minutes ; barley should be soaked over night,

or for several hours; boil by itself in a little water till tender; add

to the soup just before serving. Vermicelli and macaroni should be broken up small, and washed thoroughly ; boil in the soup half an hour.

' If a soup is wanted without any addition of vegetables, but thick- ened, arrow-root or corn starch is used in the proportion of two round tea-spoons of the latter and two scant tea-spoons of the former to a quart of soup. Mix with a little water until smooth, and add when the soup is nearly done. Wheat flour is also used for thick- ening, but it requires three round table-spoons to the quart. If not thick enough to suit the taste more may be added. Browned flour does not thicken, the starchy property having been removed in the browning process.

Thickened soups require more seasoning than thin soups ; if wanted very clear and delicate, strain through a hair sieve.

Always use cold water in making all soups ; skim well, especially during the first hour. There is great necessity for thorough skim- ming, and to help the scum rise, pour in a little cold water now and then, and as the soup reaches the boiling point, skim it off Use salt at first sparingly, and season with salt and pepper ; allow one quart soup to three or four persons.

For a quick soup, crush the bone and cut the meat rather fine ; when done, strain and serve. Every kitchen should be provided with a soup-kettle (which has a double bottom), or a large iron pot with a tight-fitting tin cover with a hole size of a large darning- needle in it i^t one side of the handle. Keep kettle covered closely, eo that the flavor may not be lost, and simmer slowly, so that the quantity may not be much reduced by evaporation, but if it has boiled away (which may be the case when the meat is to be uaed for the table), pour in as much hot water as is needed, and add vegetables, noodles, or any thickening desired. Vegetables should be added just long enough before soup is done to allow them to he thoroughly cooked. An excellent soup for a small fiimily may he made from the bones and trimmings cut from a steak before broil- ing. The bones from a rib roast, which are generally cut out and thrown away by the butcher, after weighing, should always he ordered sent with roast and used for soup.

For coloring and flavoring soups, use caramel, browned flour.

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onions fried brown, meat with cloves in it, or browned with butter. Poached eggs are an excellent addition to some soups. They should be added just before serving, one for each person. They may be poached in water or dropped into the boiling soup, or two or three eggs, well-beaten and added just before pouring in tureen, make a nice thickening. Cayenne pepper or a bit of red pepper pod, Wor- cestershire, Halford, or Chili sauce, and catsups, are considered by many an improvement to soup, but must be cautiously used. Force- meat balls, made of the meat boiled for the soup, are also used.