HINTS TO HOUSEWIVES.

Evening Star, Issue 10399, 21 August 1897, Page 4 (Supplement)

HINTS TO HOUSEWIVES.

Beefsteak a L’Epicueien. —Choose a fillet steak for this dish ; when trimmed cut it in slices an inch'thick, and season with pepper, salt, and oil. Broil on both sides. Prepare some epicurean butter and dish the steak on it; pour truffle sauce over. Roast Sweetbreads,— Soak the sweetbreads in cold water for two hours, boil them for five minutes, and then put them in cold water ; trim away all skin and sinew. Brush them with b?atan egg, roll in breadcrumbs, sprinkle with clarified butter, and breadcrumb them again. Melt three ounces of fresh butter in a* put in the sweetbreads, and hake them in a sharp oven for a little over half an hour, basting often. They should be a nice light brown. Hand white sauce with them.

Mutton Cutlets a la Soubise.— Saw off the upper rib bones from a neck of mutton, leaving the bones, which are to form cutlets about two inches long. Separate into cutlets, trim them neatly without waste; melt an ounce of butter in a sautd-pan, put in the cutlets, fry them on both sides'; remove them, and press till cold. Make a very thick puree of onions, let it get cold, and spread some on one side of each cutlet. Brush with egg and dip in breadcrumbs and fry a golden brown. Dish on a border of potatoes, with onion sauce round the base.— ‘ St. James Gazette.’

To clean lacquered articles ordinary soap and water will bo found superior to anything else. It is a mistake to ure soda or anything of the kind, for it will probably spoil the lacquer. After washing the things with warm water and soap, dry them carefully, and polish with a soft cloth or leather. Apples, says Dr A. T. Schofield in the ‘ Leisure Hour,’ are one.of the. most nutritious and (for most ‘ people) digestible of fruits proper, bud as there are 1,200 varieties, it is essential to select large fully-ripened fruit of good sweet flavor. Ripe juicy pears (not wooden ones) are even more digestible when in perfection, but less nutritious, than apples. Gropes ore most nutritious and wholesome, but the seeds are-better not eaten ; and the skins of all fruits, being of a corky nature, are indigestible. Raisins are •less digestible but equally nutritious as grapes. Bananas are very nutritious and genet ally easy of digestion. Oranges and melons are of less value as foods, being rather beverages. All other ripe fruits proper are digestible and wholesome, bub not so nutritious as apples. ' These should be well masticated, and not eaten as dessert.

.Not everyone knows that-chrysanthemums may be converted into a very dainty dish. Chopped very fine and served with pure fresh cream, the gorgeous Japanese blossom ia said to make a most delicious salad. It tastes a little like cauliflower, but is more delicate. The people in some of tho provinces of France make an extremely palatable salad of tho white aud piuk clover blossoms, and everyone knows that the nasturtium blooms taste very much like watercress. The nabobs of India esteem the blooms of the cassia tree as an especially dainty food. They have a sweet spiocy flavor.

Rittan bamboo and basket-work furniture may be thoroughly cleaned by scrubbing with a brush and salt water. Japanese and plain straw matting should be washed with salt and water, and rhbbad dry. Shoes that have become stiff and uncomfortable by being worn in tho rain, or that have been lying unused for some time, may be made soft and pliable by vaseline, well rubbed in with a cloth, and rubbed off with a dry cloth. This is how to clean steel fireirons; Scrape a little bath brick into an old saucer and pour over it enough paraffin oil to wet it. Rub this mixture well into the steel with a linen cloth ; polish afterwards with a leather and dry wniting. A housekeeper.says that it is a mistake' to remove the white coverlet of the bed from blankets, as some careful people do. This exposes the blankets to the dust, which floats into the room through tho open window. It is easier to wash a light coverlet than the blankets, and euch a counterpane should be used over tho bed at night. It may be placed directly under a heavier counterpane during the day. For sweeping a room nicely there is nothing like newspaper aid. Take, a page of newspaper at a time, wet it in hot water, and squeese it until it ceases to drip. Tear into small pieces of about the size of your hand, and cast them all over the carpet. Then sweep, and most of the dust in the room will be gathered into tho paper. On matting use larger pieces of paper, pushing them ahead of the broom to take up any fluff there may be before beginning the regular sweeping.

don’ts fob thb drawing room. Too much of anything is as bad as too little, and too many ornaments in a drawing room make it look like a fancy bazaar or a second-hand furniture shop. Don’t have your mantelshelves overloaded with a confused mass of bric-a-brac. A wellchosen bit of china, a large vase, and an artistic piece‘of drapery are all that the ordinary mantel requires. Don’t fill up the room itself with more little tables than you can help. Don’t tie bows on the backs of the chairs, or drape your picture frames with scarves, and don’t hang your walls with cheap prints or glaring oil paintings, A few choice pictures will be more ornamental than a dozen gaudy ones.