MENU - Gala-Day Luncheons: A Little Book of Suggestions - 21

The peppers are prepared by cutting off the small end and filling them with creamed salmon, heating them in the oven before serving. The patties are to be purchased at the bakery and filled with a mixture of sweetbreads and canned mushrooms. The chicken in rice is a delicious dish, and one easily prepared, but seldom seen. The white meat of two or if necessary three chickens is stewed until tender, then cut into pieces about four inches by two, and put in the centre of a border of boiled rice which has been turned out on a round platter; a sauce made of the strained chicken stock, thickened and with cream added until it is white in colour, is then poured over the whole. If sherry is used it should be added the last thing.

ICES IN A NEST OF SPUN SUGAR.

The sherbet is odd; make a lemon ice and divide it; colour one half light green and flavour with essence of peppermint; serve the two ices together in glass cups, one layer of each.

The salad is made by cutting a head of lettuce into strips with the scissors, until it looks like grass, and putting this in a sort of nest shape on the plate with the yolks of hard-boiled eggs in a group in the centre and mayonnaise in a stiff spoonful on top. The cake served with the cream should be what is called sunshine cake, an angels' food to which the yolks of the eggs has been added.

EASTER LILY OF ICE CREAM.

Another Easter luncheon may be arranged in green and white, which is even more beautiful and stately than this in yellow. For this, have a centrepiece of Easter lilies in a tall slender glass vase, or have three such vases down the table, if it is an oblong one, or several grouped around one larger one in the middle if it is round. Have guest cards painted with Easter lilies, and use only white and green decorations of bonbons on the table,—ribbon candies are pretty, or candy baskets in green filled with white candies. If you use candles on the table, have the shades represent lilies, inverted. The little cakes may be iced in green, and the colours carried out in the ice cream, which may be purchased in beautiful forms of lilies, the flower being of lemon ice and the leaves of pistache cream. Or, if the cream must be home-made, you may have it of the pistache and serve it in a bed of whipped cream in rounded spoonfuls. Or, by way of still another method, have a plain white cream and serve it with a spray of maiden-hair fern on each plate.

A SHAKESPEARIAN LUNCHEON

By a curious coincidence, Shakespeare's birthday and the day on which he died are the same,—the twenty-third of April; so this date is peculiarly appropriate for a luncheon to a literary club, or a group of literary friends. There is ample scope here for all sorts of Shakespearian suggestions, from views of his home, or sketches of Anne Hathaway's cottage on the cards, to quotations taken from one play, or from many; for reminders of some one heroine, or suggestions of some historic event. One might have a Rosalind or Juliet luncheon, or carry out in one of half a dozen ways some play which a class has been studying.

The flowers should certainly be English, either roses or primroses, and the decorations should be rather simple, as in keeping with the classic nature of the presiding genius of the day. The cards might bear a cut of his head, or each guest might have a small plaster bust, preferably one of the odd coloured ones which are sold in Stratford; the plain plaster ones are easily coloured; or, if these little busts are not easily procured, get the small Japanese masks which are so artistic; they cost but a few cents each, and the expressions will convey the idea of comedy and tragedy.

Strawberries will be in market in cities by the latter part of April, and these will make a first course.