ROUND THE TABLE

them in pyramid shape, either within a border of aspic jelly, or simply with pieces of aspic around. Fowl can be combined with game by using fillets of fowl and a puree • — either wholly made of game or of the flesh of the fowTs legs, flavoured by the addition of trimmings of game — in the middle.

When I speak of game, I mean game that is fit to eat, and not in that state of decomposition which by some is considered the chief attraction of game. In all cases the sauce is improved by the addition, off the fire, of the yolks of a couple of eggs beaten up with the wine and strained.

The one essential element to make a decent Cliaud- froid is the truffle, without which a Chaud-froid, of fowl especially, would not be one at all. The conditions of success are, that the sauce be well flavoured and suffi- ciently reduced, and that the aspic lack neither flavour nor brilliancy.

VEGETABLES.

VEGETABLES.

The English, as a rule, are essentially a carnivorous people. With the exception of those poetically sensitive persons who are called vegetarians, Englishmen seldom or never eat vegetables except as a vehicle for animal food. They are, perhaps, justified in this by the fact that, if there is a branch of cookery of which they are more ignorant than any other, it is the art of cooking vegeta- bles. Those Englishmen, who by education, travel, and superior intelligence, have learned what to eat and how to eat, deplore that, in the bosoms of their families, they never can get those succulent leguminous preparations which are obtainable on the other side of the Channel, and, perhaps, at some select establishments, clubs, and hotels in town. Of course, I do not speak of the happy few whose means enable them to keep a true artist to direct their kitchen; I refer to those who must be content to leave the preparation of their food in the hands of the British female cook; whose modes of dressing vegetables — especially greens and the like — are as un- inviting, not to use a stronger word, to the eye as they are insipid to the palate. Nevertheless, I have no doubt that there are people whose prejudice and ignorance are such that they would prefer a misshapen mass of vegetable matter, well squeezed together, to a dish of greens properly dressed ; but as there may be others who would, if they could, have their vegetables decently