JANUARY 15 



pinch of powdered ginger brings out their flavour. They 

 are always eaten in America with turkeys, as we eat 

 apple-sauce with goose. Many people do not know that 

 turkeys are natives of America, and that the French 

 word dinde is merely a shortening of coq d'Inde (India 

 being the name given to America for some time after its 

 discovery). It is curious to think that these birds, now 

 so common an article of food at this time of year, were 

 totally unknown to the luxurious Komans. The Cran- 

 berries should not be mashed up, but shpuld look like 

 stoned cherries in syrup. They can be eaten with chicken 

 or game, or with roast mutton instead of red-currant 

 jelly. In Norway the small native Cranberry is eaten 

 with any stew, especially with hares and ptarmigan. 

 The custom of eating sweets with meat seems to come 

 to us from Germany and the North ; the French hate it. 

 One of the eternal trials to every housekeeper is the 

 making of coffee. I always use half Mocha and half 

 Plantation. When in the country, I roast the beans 

 at home ; and the two kinds must be done separately, 

 as they are not the same size. For breakfast coffee a 

 small quantity of ground Chicory the best French is 

 a great improvement, and increases the health-giving 

 properties of coffee and milk ; but it should never be used 

 for black coffee. The beans should in damp weather be 

 warmed and dried a little before grinding; it freshens 

 them up, as it does biscuits. One of the mysterious 

 reasons for the flat tastelessness of coffee one day and not 

 another is the coffee-grinder not being cleaned out; a 

 tablespoonful of stale ground coffee will spoil the 

 whole. Other reasons are either the water not boil- 

 ing, or the water having boiled a long time, or water 

 that has boiled and cooled being warmed up again ; this 

 is fatal, as it is with tea. I find the modern crockery 

 percolators a great improvement on the old tin ones, 



