FEBRUARY 27 



without mashing it up. It looks better if the pieces are 

 slightly arranged in the dish. If anything iron touches 

 the Ehubarb or the syrup, they turn purple and look 

 horrid. Properly cooked, Ehubarb should be of a pretty 

 pink or green colour. Many doctors forbid it. I think it 

 probably may be unwholesome for meat-eating people ; 

 this is the case with so many fruits and vegetables. 



All my tarts throughout the year are made with the 

 crust baked apart, and the fruit, stewed previously, juicy 

 and cold. Shortly before dinner make the paste called 

 in ' Dainty Dishes ' ' crisp paste ' for tarts ; crumple up 

 kitchen paper into a mound the height you wish your 

 crust to be, place it in the pie-dish the round-shaped 

 dishes are the prettiest cover this with a clean sheet of 

 buttered paper, lay your paste over this, bake in the usual 

 way. When done, lift off the crust, take out the paper, 

 pour in the fruit (which can be iced, if desired), put a 

 little raw white of egg round the rim of the pie-dish, and 

 replace the crust. In this way an orange or a strawberry 

 tart can be made without cooking the fruit at all, except 

 in the usual compote way of pouring boiling syrup over it. 



Towards the end of February is the best time for 

 making Orange Marmalade (see ' Dainty Dishes '), as the 

 Seville oranges in London are then at their best. In all 

 cases when old jam pots, glasses, &c., are used for pre- 

 serving, it is very desirable to wash them thoroughly in 

 clean water, avoiding all soda or soap, and, when dry, 

 powder them with a little sulphur and wipe clean. If 

 soda is used in anything connected with fruit, it has an 

 injurious chemical action. 



The following are the translations of a few careful 

 recipes which were written out by a very excellent French 

 chef. They belong to so entirely different a cuisine from 

 our ordinary modest and economical recipes, that I think 

 they may be not without interest to some people. It is 



