5. A la Lyonnaise is prepared as follows:  Take five cold potatoes, one onion, butter, salt, and pepper.  Slice the onion finely, and fry it in butter until it begins to take color; add the sliced potatoes, salt and pepper to taste, and keep shaking the saucepan until they are somewhat browned.  Serve hot.

A few random remarks about the preparation of albuminous foods.  If the albumen in food is hardened by prolonged cooking, it is rendered less instead of more digestible.  Therefore, the so-called well-cooked meats are really badly-cooked meats.  Meats should be only half done, or rare.  To do this properly, it is necessary to cook with a quick fire.  Steaks should be broiled, not fried.  I am in accord with a well-known orator, who said, recently, that “the person who fries a steak should be arrested for cruelty to humanity.”  Some few meats should always be well cooked before eating.[6]

[Footnote 6:  These are the exceptions.  Pork, on account of the prevalence of disease in hogs, should be well done.]

The same law holds good with eggs as with meats.  A hard-boiled egg is only fit for the stomach of an ostrich; it was never intended by nature to adorn the human stomach.  There are very many ways of preparing eggs—­by frying, baking, poaching, shirring, etc.  I will only describe briefly a few simple methods of making omelets.

In making this elegant dish, never use more than three eggs to an omelet.  Plain omelet:  Separate the whites and yolks; add a teaspoonful of water to the whites, and beat to a stiff froth; add to the yolks a teaspoonful of water, and beat until light; then season with salt, and about two tablespoonfuls of cream or rich milk.  Have your spider very hot; turn your whites and yolks together, and stir lightly to mix them; place a bit of butter in the spider, and immediately pour in your eggs.  When set (which takes from ten to twenty seconds, and be careful that it does not brown too much), fold together in a half moon, remove it, sprinkle with powdered sugar, and serve on a hot plate.  It should be eaten immediately.

Fruit omelets are made by placing preserved fruits or jellies between the folds.  Baked omelets are prepared as above, with the addition of placing in the oven and allowing to brown slightly.

French omelet is prepared in this way:  Take a half cup of boiling milk with a half teaspoonful of butter melted in it; pour this over one-half cup of bread crumbs (light bread); add salt, pepper, and the yolks of three eggs beaten very light; mix thoroughly; and lastly, add the whites whipped to a stiff froth.  Stir lightly, and fry in butter.  When nearly done, fold together in a half moon, and serve immediately.

And thus we might continue ad infinitum, but, as was stated before, it is not my object to instruct you in special cooking, but to illustrate in this manner how much easier it is, to both the cook and your stomachs, to prepare healthful dishes than to do the reverse.