SCALLOPED KNIFE

This knife is used to cut beets, carrots, turnip-rooted celery, potatoes, radishes, and turnips; in slices, round, oblong, or of any other shape; either to decorate dishes, or to be served alone or with something else, or to be fried.

The annexed cuts will give an idea of what can be done with it. It is understood that the vegetables are peeled first.

Shallots come from Syria. Shallot is stronger than garlic and onion; a real Tartar sauce cannot be made without shallot. The small, green onion is a good substitute for it.

The cuts below are skewers. The common ones are used to fasten pieces of meat together; to roast or bake small birds, liver in _brochette_, etc., etc.

Those to decorate are only used with different flowers or vegetables, and stuck inside of different pieces of meat as a decoration. They are removed just before carving.

The use of them is explained in the different receipts. They may be different from those seen in the cuts.

The cooks of this country generally have a queer idea of what they call French cookery and French spices.

Some honestly believe that to make a French dish a great deal of pepper and other strong seasonings must be put in.

Many other persons, who have not been in Europe, really believe also, that French cookery is what is called highly-seasoned. There never was a greater mistake.

If French cooks use several kinds of spices, and may-be more than American cooks, they are not the same; or if some are the same, such as pepper, they use them in much smaller proportions.

They generally use thyme, parsley, bay-leaf, chervil, tarragon, etc., which are aromatic; but never use (in this climate) ginger, curry, cayenne pepper, pimento, catsups, variegated colored pickles made with pyroligneous acids, etc., and which are very exciting and irritating.

Some of our readers may naturally ask: How is it that French cookery is believed by many to be the contrary of what it really is?

Because every eating-house, of no matter what size, pretends to be a first-rate one or a fashionable one--and to be first-rate or fashionable must, as a matter of course, have French cooks, or at least cook French dishes.

You enter the place, ask for a French dish; or, ask if you can have such a dish, _a la Francaise_?

You are politely and emphatically answered in the affirmative; and very often the polite waiter says that a French cook presides in the kitchen.

Result!--the cook, be he from the Green Isle or of African descent, receiving the order to prepare a French dish, puts a handful of pepper in the already too much peppered, old-fashioned prepared dish, and sends it to the confident customer as a genuine French dish.

Said customer never asks a second time for a French dish, and pronounces French cookery to be--abominable!

Never use any spoon but a wooden one to stir any thing on the fire or in a warm state.

STRAINING.

To strain, is to pass a sauce or any thing else through a sieve, a strainer, or a piece of cloth, in order to have it freed from particles of every kind.

Broth is strained to make soup, so as to remove the small pieces of bones that may be in it, etc.

Sugar plays a very important part in cooking. It is added to cereals, vegetables, and fruit, many of which would almost be unpalatable without it, and which are rendered not only palatable but wholesome by its action.

It is the sugar of the carrot and that of the onion, or of the garlic, that gives such a peculiar and delicious flavor to gravies and sauces, to _beef a la mode_, _fricandeau_, etc.

_Pulverized._--When pulverized or powdered sugar can be had pure, it saves the trouble to do it; but often there are foreign matters in it and therefore it is better to make it; you know then what you have.

Break loaf sugar into small lumps, pound it and sift it. With a fine sieve, you can make it as fine as you please.

It was not used in Europe until about the middle of the seventeenth century.

For the cooking of sugar, see Preserves.

The French name of tarragon is _estragon_. It is excellent in vinegar and in many fish sauces. It is aromatic, sudorific, and stomachic, and grows very well in this country. It grows at least twice as large here as in Europe.