Chestnut Soup.—Boil a pound of chestnuts until they seem tender, peel off the shell and brown skin; return the white part to the stewpan and cover with water, add a finely-minced onion, an ounce of butter, pepper and salt. Let this simmer for an hour or more, then rub all carefully through a sieve, add a pint or rather more of boiling milk and a dessertspoonful of cornflour previously mixed smooth with cold water, and stir this again over the fire until it boils. Serve fried croutons with this soup.

Lemon Soles should be filleted before frying them, and they should be dipped in beaten egg and fresh crumbs of bread and sprinkled with seasoning. Fry them to a golden brown in boiling lard or beef dripping, squeeze a little lemon juice over them and serve garnished with fried parsley.

Ragout of Mutton.—A piece of the middle neck, or the shank half of the shoulder, the meat taken from the bones and trimmed into neat pieces, is the best for this. Flour each piece lightly, lay in a stewpan with thinly-sliced onions, sliced turnip, a few sprigs of savoury herbs and seasoning. Pour over all a teacupful of water and cover tightly. Let this simmer in a corner of the oven for about two hours, and then arrange the meat on a dish, add a spoonful of mushroom ketchup to the gravy, with more water if it seems too thick, and pour over the meat.

Mash the potatoes and beat them up with milk till like thick cream; pile this up in a buttered pie-dish, and put the dish into a quick oven to brown the surface.

Mash the artichokes also and press them into a shallow dish, sprinkling breadcrumbs over the top and a bit of butter, and brown these also.

Snipe require a very quick hot oven for their roasting, and about fifteen minutes is long enough to allow. Place them on a strip of crisp toast, and some tiny frizzles of bacon with them, and sprinkle fried crumbs over. No sauce will be needed.

Chelsea Pudding.—Shred and chop very finely two ounces of suet, add to four ounces of flour into which a teaspoonful of baking powder has been rubbed, also a pinch of salt and two ounces of castor sugar, the grated rind of a fresh lemon or a pinch of spice, mix well, and make into a soft dough with a beaten egg and a teacupful of milk. Grease a shaped pudding-basin and sprinkle the inside with brown sugar, pour in the pudding-mixture and bake until it has risen well and is of a rich brown colour.

The sauce for this pudding is made by placing half-a-pound pot of plum or currant jam in a saucepan, with a few lumps of sugar and an equal amount of water. Let this boil for a little while, then strain it through a tamis and pour over and around the pudding when that has been turned out.

Suitable dishes for the dinner-table in cold weather are the following: Beefsteak pudding, Irish stew, stewed steak, sea pie, camp pie, haricot mutton, liver and bacon, etc.—very homely dishes, it is true, but good and nourishing for all that.