VEGETARIAN COOKERY

wire sieve upside down on a large sheet of paper. The bread must be stale, and stale pieces can be put by for this pur- pose. Next take, say, a pint of milk, and let it boil ; then throw in the bread-crumbs and let them hoil in the milk. This is the secret of good bread sauce. Add a dozen pepper- corns, and place a whole onion in the saucepan containing the bread and milk, and place the saucepan beside the fire in order to allow the bread-crumbs to swell. It will be found that though at starting the bread sauce was quite thin and milky, yet after a time it becomes thick. Take out the onion, add a litfcle piece of butter, stir it up, and serve. A little cream is a great improvement, but is not absolutely necessary. This sauce, though very simple, requires care. Many persons will probably recollect having met with bread sauce which in appearance resembled a poultice too much to be agreeable either to the palate or the eye.

Butter Sauce. — This is the most important of all the sauces with which we have to deal. The great mistake made by the vast majority of women cooks is that they will use milk. They thicken a pint of milk with a little butter and flour and then call it melted butter, and, as a rule, send to table enough for twenty persons when only two or three are dining. As butter sauce will be served with the majority of vegetables, we would call the attention of vegetarians to the fact that, as a rule, ordinary cookery-books take for granted that vegetables will be served with the meat. When therefore vegetables are served separately, and are intended to be eaten with bread as a course by themselves, some alteration must be made in the method of serving them. Again, vegetarians should bear in mind that, except in cases where poverty necessitates rigid economy, a certain amount of butter may be considered almost a necessity, should the meal be wished to be both wholesome and nourishing. Francatelli, who was chef-de- cuisine to the Earl of Chesterfield, and was also chief cook to the Queen and chef at the Eeform Club, and after- wards manager of the Freemasons' Tavern, in writing on this subject observes : — Butter sauce, or, as it is more absurdly called, melted butter, is the foundation of the whole of the following sauces, and requires very great care in its prepara-

fcion. Though simple, it is nevertheless a very useful and agreeable sauce when properly made. So far from this being usually the case, it is too generally left to assistants to pre- pare, as an insignificant matter ; the result is therefore seldom satisfactory. When a large quantity of butter sauce is required, put four ounces of fresh butter into a middle-sized stew-pan, with some grated nutmeg and minionette pepper ; to these add four ounces of sifted flour, knead the whole well together, and moisten with a pint of cold spring water ; stir the sauce on the fire till it boils, and after having kept it gently boiling for t^venty minutes (observing that it be not thicker than the consistency of common white sauce), proceed to mix in one pound and a half of sweet fresh butter, taking care to stir the sauce quickly the whole time of the operation. Should it appear to turn oily, add now and then a spoonful of cold spring water; finish with the juice of half a lemon, and salt to palate ; then pass the sauce through a tammy into a large bain-marie for use."

We have quoted the recipe of the late M. Francatelli in full, as we believe it is necessary to refer to some very great authority in order to knock out the prejudice from the minds of many who think that they not only can themselves cook, but teach others, but who are bound in the chains of prejudice and tradition which, too often, in the most simple recipes, lead them to follow in the footsteps of their grandmothers.

Keal butter sauce can be made as follows, on a small scale : — Take a claret- glass of water, and about a small teaspoonful of flour mixed with rather more than the same quantity of butter, and mix this in the water over the fire till it is of the con- sistency of very thin gruel. If it is thicker than this, add a little more water. Now take any quantity of butter, and gradually dissolve as much as you can in this thin gruel, adding say half an ounce at a time, till the sauce becomes a rich oily compound. After a time, if you add too much butter, the sauce will curdle and turn oily, as described by Francatelli.

Of course, in everyday life it is not necessary to have the butter sauce so rich, still it is simply ridiculous to thicken a pint of milk, or a pint of water, with a little butter and flour, and then call it butter sauce or melted butter Suppose we