If the cook is smart, the whole dinner could be served easily within an hour, and should one or two of the girls in the house be willing to assist (and who would not, under such circumstances?), the dinner might be sent to table in considerably less time. I can imagine some of my readers glancing over the bill of fare I have just written, and saying to themselves, “What a lot of saucepans we shall want on the fire at the same time!” This, however, is not the case; for I would remind you that one of the first points to learn in connection with the serving of tinned meats is that they should be warmed up in the tin before it is opened. We can, therefore, perform the astonishing trick of making hot our ox-tail soup, our curried rabbit, our asparagus, and our plum pudding in the same saucepan at the same time.

I must, however, commence at the beginning. Our store cupboard is supposed to contain the following provisions in tins:—Ox-tail soup, preserved salmon, mayonnaise sauce, curried rabbit, asparagus, plum pudding, pine apple in syrup, as well as a bottle of jelly. I may, however, mention, with regard to the mayonnaise sauce, that should you have a bottle of oil in the house and a couple of eggs, it would be better to make some fresh sauce from the egg and oil direct. Our cupboard will also contain a bottle of pickled walnuts, a bottle of capers, a bottle of olives, and a bottle of anchovies.

Of course we commence dinner with the soup, unless we happen to have in the house a Brunswick sausage, in which case a few thin slices of Brunswick sausage may be placed in a plate with a few of the anchovies, capers, olives, and a little pat of butter, as there are many persons who like to commence dinner with what is known as a hors d’œuvre, and I do not know a better mixture than the one I have named.

But to return to the soup. In my opinion, of all provisions sold in tins at present, the soups are the greatest failures.

This is very much to be regretted; but there is a good old saying, that we must always make the best of a bad job. As a rule, the thick soups are better than the clear, and although I have mentioned ox-tail soup, I will later on give a list of the soups from which you may take your choice. Fortunately, all thick soups in tins can be very greatly improved by a very simple method. Make the thick soup hot in the tin, take the tin out of the hot water, open it, and pour the contents into a saucepan. Of course, if there are many persons to dinner, it would be necessary to warm up two tins, or even more. I will now describe the contents of the tin. The soup itself is not exactly thick, nor is it exactly clear. The bones of the tail, instead of being surrounded by the meat, are quite bare, and it looks as if the bone and the meat had had a quarrel, and they had mutually agreed never to speak to one another again, while the bone itself recalls a game known as “knuckle-bones.” To every pint of soup in the saucepan add as follows: a brimming dessertspoonful of brown thickening, or what French cooks know as brown roux. This brown roux looks like light-coloured chocolate. It keeps good for months, is very cheap, very useful, and I will describe how to make it by-and-by. Add, also, a brimming teaspoonful of extract of meat and half a glass of sherry. The effect of adding the brown roux is that when the roux is crumbled into the soup and gently stirred over the fire till it boils, it makes the soup thicker than it was before. It also makes it darker in colour, richer in flavour, and makes the divorce between the meat and the bone less conspicuous.

The extract of meat also greatly adds to its nutritious properties, and gives additional colour. The sherry gives it flavour. Were I going to take the soup myself, I should also add a little cayenne pepper and lemon-juice, but we must be very cautious how we use cayenne, unless we know the taste of our guests.

We will next consider the salmon mayonnaise. As this is all cold, we should naturally see to the hot things first, and we will, therefore, suppose that the ox-tail soup, the curried rabbit, the asparagus, and the plum pudding are all getting hot in the saucepan. First open the tin of salmon. Turn the contents entirely out. If there is any liquid, throw it away, and, as far as possible, absorb all the moisture of the salmon in a dry cloth before placing it in a dish. Make the surface, as far as possible, oval, and raised in the middle, and then pour the sauce with a spoon gently over the top, so that it looks like a custard pudding. If the season of the year is suitable, and we have some lettuces in our garden, of course we should cut one or two lettuces, and surround the salmon with the best part of the lettuce. Next to ornament the salad. Take a bottle of capers, and with a spoon take out about a couple of dozen, throw these into a cloth and dry them, and place them at intervals on the sauce. Then take three or four anchovies out of the bottle, cut them into strips, remove the bone, and place these little strips of anchovy round the base of the light pyramid of sauce like trellis work. A dozen olives may be placed also round the base of the salad, the stone being removed with a knife. This is done by taking not too sharp a knife and cutting the olive sideways, keeping the blade of the knife always in contact with the stone of the olive. When the stone is removed the olive assumes its original shape, of course with a hole in the middle where the stone has been. Now take a little piece of parsley and chop up enough, say, to cover a shilling or a little more. Place this on the tip of a knife and shake it gently over the mayonnaise sauce, so that the little green specks of parsley fall naturally. Now take a bottle of cochineal, supposing you have one—cochineal can be bought at sixpence a bottle, and keeps good for months, or even years—and drop a few drops in a plate or saucer; take a little piece of dry bread and make about a saltspoonful of fine breadcrumbs. Throw these dry breadcrumbs into the saucer with the cochineal, and shake them. This will cause the breadcrumbs to turn red. These can be shaken over the mayonnaise like the chopped parsley, and we shall have a very bright-looking dish. The green lettuce round the edge, the raised surface of the salmon covered with the yellow mayonnaise sauce in the middle, which is decorated round the base with the anchovies and olives, and on the top the capers and the little green and red specks, which contrast nicely with the yellow. If you have no lettuce or salad of any kind to put round the base, you can ornament the edge with hard-boiled eggs cut in quarters, and a sprig of parsley between each piece.

Our next dish is the hashed mutton and pickled walnuts. This scarcely comes in the category of tinned meats. The mutton we had for dinner was probably in a semi-cold and flabby state when our guest arrived. Were I going to make the hashed mutton, I should commence by slicing up a couple of onions, browning them in a frying-pan with a little butter, then pouring in the remains of all the gravy that had been left from the joint, cutting the mutton into slices, and warming them up in this gravy, taking care it does not boil; and as the gravy would be rather poor, as soon as the soup was got ready I should add two or three tablespoonfuls of the soup to the hashed mutton. And let me remind you of another very great improvement. Add, as well, a dessertspoonful of Harvey sauce, after shaking the bottle. You can toast a piece of bread a nice brown, as you would not have time to fry any bread, which is better. Cut the toast into round pieces, and place them round the hash alternately with the pickled walnuts cut in half. Do not send the hashed mutton to table in a great, big dish, large enough to hold a round of beef, but serve it in a deep dish—a vegetable dish, for instance. By this means it keeps hot longer, and looks more appetising.

Our next dish is the curried rabbit. First class curry can be obtained in tins. Remember that tinned meats are like everything else in the world—some are good, and some are bad. If you wish for a bottle of really good wine, you must go to a first class wine merchant; and if you wish your tinned provisions good, you must get them from first class people, or see that some well-known name is on the label. Unfortunately, this country has been flooded, from time to time, with worthless imitations, introduced by unknown men who have no name to lose.