ORANGE DROPS.

Grate the rind of one orange and squeeze the juice, taking care to reject the seeds; add to this a pinch of tartaric acid; then stir in confectioners’ sugar until it is stiff enough to form into balls the size of a small marble.  This is delicious candy.

The same process for lemon drops, using lemons in place of orange.  Color a faint yellow.

COCOANUT CREAMS.

Make the uncooked cream as in the foregoing recipe.  Take the cream while soft, add fresh grated cocoanut to taste; add sufficient confectioners’ sugar to mold into balls and then roll the balls in the fresh grated cocoanut.  These may be colored pink with a few drops of cochineal syrup, also brown by adding a few spoonfuls of grated chocolate; then rolling them in grated cocoanut; the three colors are very pretty together.  The coconut cream may be made into a flat cake and cut into squares or strips.

With this uncooked cream, all the recipes given for the cooked “French Cream,” may be used:  English walnut creams, variegated creams, etc.

COFFEE, TEA, BEVERAGES.

Boiling water is a very important desideratum in the making of a cup of good coffee or tea, but the average housewife is very apt to overlook this fact.  Do not boil the water more than three or four minutes; longer boiling ruins the water for coffee or tea making, as most of its natural properties escape by evaporation, leaving a very insipid liquid composed mostly of lime and iron, that would ruin the best coffee, and give the tea a dark, dead look, which ought to be the reverse.

Water left in the tea-kettle over night must never be used for preparing the breakfast coffee; no matter how excellent your coffee or tea may be, it will be ruined by the addition of water that has been boiled more than once.

THE HEALING PROPERTIES OF TEA AND COFFEE.

The medical properties of these two beverages are considerable.  Tea is used advantageously in inflammatory diseases and as a cure for the headache.  Coffee is supposed to act as a preventative of gravel and gout, and to its influence is ascribed the rarity of those diseases in Prance and Turkey.  Both tea and coffee powerfully counteract the effects of opium and intoxicating liquors:  though, when taken in excess, and without nourishing food, they themselves produce, temporarily at least, some of the more disagreeable consequences incident to the use of ardent spirits.  In general, however, none but persons possessing great mobility of the nervous system, or enfeebled or effeminate constitutions, are injuriously affected by the moderate use of tea and coffee in connection with food.

COFFEE.