in his dull but worthy way, used to insist on a
cherry tart every day in the year; which reminds
us of a quiet country gentleman we once knew,
whose gardener had carried off enough gold
medals to pave a greenhouse. The master did not
care much for flowers, they were for his wife;
his only request was that he might find a cucumber
on the dinner-table, every day from January
to December. The late Lord Dudley, whose
brain at last softened, and who showed it first by
calling on friends, mistaking their houses for
his own, and wondering why in the name of all
that was sacred the other man did not go, could
not dine without apple pie (he hated the word
tart, and applied it only to open pastry). Once
when Foreign Secretary, Lord Dudley, dining
with Prince Esterhazy, the Hungarian Crœsus,
who used to strew Almack's with fallen
diamonds (the London tradition says about
three hundred pounds' worth every evening
he attended), was put out at finding none
of his favourite humble delicacy, and kept
muttering in his absent way, "God bless my
soul, no apple pie." This eccentric nobleman,
whose peculiarities Theodore Hook introduced
into one of his novels, used to talk aloud to
himself about his friends present, and his state of
brain was at last disclosed by his sending an
important despatch to the wrong foreign court.
The late Duke of Cambridge revelled in apple
dumplings. On one occasion, on a visit to
Belvoir Castle to attend the celebration of the
noble owner's birthday, the royal visitor was
shown a sumptuous and most exquisitely
devised bill of fare, and was asked if he could
suggest any improvements. "Yes," replied
the simple-minded guest. "I don't see a roast
pig, or an apple dumpling." It was the fourth
of January, but the pigs of the neighbourhood
were instantly called upon, and at last an infant
pig was found, slain and cooked. A similar story
is told at Epsom of our present gracious Majesty,
who, when a sumptuous déjeuner was laid out for
her at her first visit to the races, asked for a
slice of bread and butter and a glass of water,
the only delicacies not to be found in the royal
marquee. Can we doubt that great people,
fretful over the crumpled rose leaf, often long
for the delicious physical fatigue of the tired
farm labourer, and the healthy hunger of the
receptive navigator?

It has been decided on great authority that a
green apricot tart is a good thing, but that a
green apricot pudding is far better. A cherry
dumpling is better than a cherry tart. Both
rhubarb and apple pies are improved by a slight
infusion of lemon juice, while a bay leaf gives
an exquisite aromatic flavour to a rice pudding.

There is a romance and history even about
pastry; for instance, the Baba, a species of
savoury biscuit coloured with saffron, was
introduced into France by Stanislas the First,
King of Poland, at a time when unfortunate
Poland was alternately the scourge and the
victim of Russia. The dish was perhaps Oriental
in origin. It is made with brioche paste mixed
with Madeira, currants, raisins, sugar, and
potted cream. The Lord Chancellor's pudding,
though unpleasant from the memories it
awakens, is a good pudding, but not a very good
pudding, as we once heard an eminent lawyer
subtly define a pudding upon whose merits he
was asked to pronounce judgment. Boil a
pint of cream, in which is infused a little lemon
peel and salt, pour it boiling over a pound
of crushed biscuits, and let them soak. Then
add the yolks of eight eggs, and the whites of
six others. The pudding can also be made with
savoury biscuits, or the crumbs of a penny loaf,
but it is best with brown bread. When made,
pour the mixture into a mould, and immerse it
in a stew-pan of boiling water with fire placed
over the lid. The sauce can be made with a
spoonful of arrow-root, white wine, and some
sugar rubbed on a lemon, and then boiled. It
can also be made with rum, but mind there
must always be lemon peel.

The pudding à la bourgeoise of the French is
our bread-and-butter pudding, with a difference,
and an excellent basis for further invention its
appetising simplicity is. First fill your
buttered mould with slices of bread and butter,
spread with dried currants. Fill up with
cold boiled milk, flavoured with lemon peel, a
little sugar and suet, and six eggs. Boil for
one hour, and serve with sweetened arrow-root
sauce.

Jellies are rather monotonous in flavour, but
their liquid jewel colour is always pleasant to
the eye; they figure pleasantly on a supper
table, but they are to sound food what puns
and bon-mots are compared to wise thoughts and
profound reflections. There is a place for them,
however, even by the side of the roast pheasant
and the pâté de Perigord, and they nestle
down gracefully between the game pies and the
cold fowls. An authority we can trust advises
orange jelly to be twice poured through the
bag, or it will be thick and opaque. It should
never be passed through paper, as that filters
off all the aroma, which is a stomachic. Mosaic
jelly, made with orange and cream jelly, is very
pretty to look at when the colours are kept clear
and distinct. Madeira jelly is improved in summer
by a mixture of strawberries. A Macédoine
is a very delicious variety of dainty, and
worthy of French taste, invention, and refinement.
It is made with wine jelly frozen in a
mould, with grapes, strawberries, greengages,
and other fruits, fresh or preserved, frozen in
alternate layers of fruit and jelly. In winter
the Macédoine may be made with preserved
peaches, plums, greengages, cherries, apricots,
or pineapples, or more economically with slices
of pears and apples boiled in syrup coloured
with carmine, saffron, or cochineal, the flavour
aided by angelica and brandied cherries. Many
great judges have decided the jelly au miroton
des pêches â la Ude to be the perfection
of jellies. Get half a dozen peaches, peel them
carefully, and boil them with their kernels for a
short time in a fine syrup. After an hour you
take the syrup, squeeze six lemons into it, pass
it through a bag, add some clarified isinglass,