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mixture sufficient Indian meal to make it thick enough to 

 pour. Take a bake-kettle or spider, grease it, pour the 

 cake in, cover it and bake it half an hour or more, ac- 

 cording to circumstances, which can be judged by the 

 eye. Sour milk is good to use in mixing this cake, instead 

 of water. A tea-spoonful of dissolved pearlash will make 

 the milk sweet, and must be used. Mrs. Child. 



PIES, &c. 



THE greatest possible cleanliness and nicety should be 

 observed in making pastry. The slab or board, paste- 

 rollers, tins, cutters, stamps, everything, in fact, used for 

 it, and especially the hands, (for these last are not always 

 so scrupulously attended to as they ought to be,) should be 

 equally free from the slightest soil, or particle of dust. 

 The more expeditiously the finer kinds of crust are made 

 and despatched to the oven, and the less they are touched, 

 the better. Much of their excellence depends upon the 

 baking also ; they should have a sufficient degree of heat 

 to raise them quickly, but not so fierce a one as to color 

 them too much before they are done, and still less to burn 

 them. The oven-door should remain closed after they 

 are put in, and not removed until the paste is set. Large 

 raised pies require a steadily sustained, or, what is tech- 

 nically called, a soaking heat ; and to ensure this, the 

 oven should be made very hot, then cleared, and closely 

 shut from half to a whole hour before it is used, to con- 

 centrate the heat. It is an advantage in this case to have 

 a large log or two of cord-wood burned in it, in addition 

 to the usual firing. 



In mixing paste, the water should be added gradually, 

 and the whole gently drawn together with the fingen, 



