Cocoanut Dessert.
This is purely a tropical dish, but Americans are very fond of it. Peel and grate a cocoanut; make a syrup out of four cups of sugar and two of water; when the syrup begins to thicken (when it has boiled about five minutes) throw in the grated cocoanut and cook on a moderate fire half an hour more; stir in the beaten yolks of three eggs and a wine glass full of sherry. Remove from the fire.
The final point of your breakfast is the coffee, and in Cuban eyes the affair will be a success or a failure according to the quality of this supreme nectar. The berry should be the best obtainable; freshly roasted, or at least the flavor refreshened by heating the grain in the oven a few minutes before using. Grind and percolate at the last moment. Serve black and very strong, in very small cups.
CHAPTER IV.
Spring and Autumn Breakfasts.
The centerpiece is of moss and ferns with arbutus blossoms peeping out, with a border of green and white fairy lamps mushroom form. Miniature flower beds, marked off with tiny white shells are in each of the four corners of the table. In one lilies of the valley stand upright, narcissii are in another, white tulips in a third and white lilacs wired on a tiny bush make the fourth. The name cards have tiny photographs of a farm with the name of the guests in gilt script. At each place is a tiny May basket of moss filled with arbutus, spring beauties, and wild violets, for a souvenir. The ice cream in flower forms is brought in in a spun sugar nest resting on twigs of pussy willows. The menu is a very simple one and includes grape fruit, the center cut out and filled with a lump of sugar soaked in rum, cream of clams, shredded whitefish in shells with horseradish and cucumbers, filet of beef with mushrooms, new potatoes, new asparagus, mint ice, squab on toast with shoestring potatoes, current jelly; salad of cucumbers, pecan nuts and lettuce with French dressing; ice cream, white cake, and black cake, coffee and cream de menthe.
April Breakfast.
April's lady wears the pussywillow for her flower, and this makes a delightful springlike motif for decoration. For the breakfast have round tables or one long table with twig baskets of pussywillows tied with bows of soft grasses, raffia dyed a silvery grey. The table is set with the old-fashioned willow pattern china, quaint Sheffield silver and is unmarked by any of the small dishes of sweets that fill breakfast tables. The name cards are decorated with sprays of pussywillows in the upper left corner and miniatures of famous women writers of this and the past decade taken from magazines: George Eliot, Miss Austen, Miss Mulock, Jean Ingelow, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Felicia Hemans, Louisa M. Alcott, Mrs. Humphrey Ward, Mrs. Burton Harrison, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Margaret Deland.
The menu is strawberries in little twig baskets with brown paper caps filled with sugar, planked fish with sliced cucumbers, deviled sweetbreads and mushrooms on toast squares, Saratoga potatoes, hot rolls, brandy peaches, waffles and hot syrup, coffee.