ECONOMICAL COOKING.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1776, 29 October 1879, Page 4

ECONOMICAL COOKING.

How to " Gather Up the Fragments that Nothing may be Lost."

We believe that the French cooks have the reputation of being the most economical cooks of all nations, and the subjoined extract from a very gossipy and interesting article in an exchange shows how matters are looked after in the French kitchen : " Suppose that one egg is left, or one potato. Here, Bridget, or the housawife herself, says, 'one is not worth keeping, and throws them into the swill-tub. The French housewife is not tempted by that unhappy institution always yawning at hand. Un the contrary, suppose the egg is soft-boiled; she drops it into a tin cup, and makes it hard-boiled at once One hard-boiled egg chopped fine is what she needs in composing a salad, and the French housekeeper is wise in behalf of good health, of good taste, and of the beauty and variety of her table, to have salads innumerable—as many kinds of salads as Bottom had of wigs. There is the egp-—the salad shall grace the tea table. Or, there is the one potato. Your French housewife knows the value of soup; she does not make a huge soup and expect her family to •dine upon it; she does not always have her «oup of one kind—she varies the kicd; anl «he has a small dish of soup as a prelude to our dinner j here she serves health and •variety. The potato nicely cut in wedges shall be one of the ingredients of her soup, lhe beginning of her Bonp is generally of "bones. Bhe has a stone jar, and the bones are usually trimmed closely out of the uncooked meat, sprinkled with salt and pepper, and put in this jar, ovar which a cloth is tied, and it in kept in a very cool place.

Almost every day, with a few bones and ■ variety as to other ingredients, she will concoct a wonderful soup—a white soup, a brown soup, a clear soup, a vegetable soup, and the spoonful of beans or peas, the few slices of tomato, the remnant of the rice or the macaroni shall not be ignominiously cast out, but the soup shall be as is most convenient to the stock on hand, and all these fragments, neatly kept, are to go therein. The French are not remarkably religious, but they follow up the monition, ' gather up the fragments that nothing be lost.' In one of our families, suppose that we have a cup of milk left from breakfast; in our closet is a slice or two of sponge or cupcake, a small saucer of jelly or preserve. In the American household the milk is frequently thrown out or one of the children is ' bidden to drink it up.' Biddy adds the jelly or preserve to her own breakfast, 'so she can have the saucer to wash.' The cake is given to the children as an interlude to meals, to spoil their appetites. Lo I the foreign housewife ! The cup of milk with an egg, a little flavoring and a trifle of thickening turns to a custard ; the cake is cut in thin pieces, spread _ with _ the conserve and laid in a white pudding dish ; the custard is poured over it; it goes for ten minutes into the oven; the white of another egg is, with a little sugar, converted into a meringue, and spread on top; now the yolk of the second egg is beaten with a little cream or milk, and sugar and spice, into a sauce, or instead of the cream a little homemade wine or the juice left from some canned fruit is used, and here is a sauce for the desert. We eat it. Delicious 1 What dainty, extravagant things these foreign people use. Instead, we Americans would have thrown away the chief part of the dish, and would have provided for deseert a huge pie, more costly and not half so wholesome."