TRUFFLE SAUCE.—­This sauce is very expensive if made from whole fresh truffles, but can be made more cheaply if you can obtain some truffle chips or parings.  These must be stewed in a little stock, thickened with brown roux, and then rubbed through a wire sieve, a little sherry being a great improvement if wine is allowed.

VANILLA SAUCE.—­Add some essence of vanilla to some sweetened butter sauce.

WHITE SAUCE.—­White sauce is sometimes required for vegetables and sometimes for puddings.  In the former case some good-flavoured, uncoloured stock must be thickened with white roux, and then have sufficient cream added to it to make the sauce a pure white.

When white sauce is wanted for puddings, sufficient butter sauce must be sweetened, and very slightly flavoured with nutmeg or almond, and then an equal quantity of cream added to it to make it a pure white.  White sauce should not have with it any strong predominant flavour.

CHAPTER III.

SAVOURY RICE, MACARONI, OATMEAL, &c.

RICE.

Probably all persons will admit that rice is a too much neglected form of food in England.  When we remember how small a quantity of rice weekly is found sufficient to keep alive millions and millions of our fellow-creatures in the East, it seems to be a matter of regret that rice as an article of food is not more used by the thousands and thousands of our fellow creatures in the East—­not in the ordinary acceptation of the term, but East of Temple Bar.  Rice is cheap, nourishing, easily cooked, and equally easily digested, yet that monster, custom, seems to step in and prevent the bulk of the poor availing themselves of this light and nourishing food solely for the reason that, as their grandfathers and grandmothers did not eat rice before them, they do not see any reason why they should, like the Irishman who objected to have his feet washed on the same ground.  Of the different kinds of rice Carolina is the best, the largest, and the most expensive.  Patna rice is almost as good; the grains are long, small, and white, and it is the best rice for curry.  Madras rice is the cheapest.

Rice, pure and simple, is the food most suited for hot climates and where a natural indolence of disposition results in one’s day’s work of an ordinary Englishman being divided among twenty people.  As we move towards more temperate zones it will be found the universal custom to qualify it by mixing it with some other substance; thus, though rice is largely eaten in Italy, it is almost invariably used in conjunction with Parmesan cheese.  Rice contains no flesh-forming properties whatever, as it contains no nitrogen; and with all due respect to vegetarians, it will be found that as we recede from the Equator and advance towards the Poles our food must of necessity vary with the latitude, and, whereas we may start on a diet of rice, we shall be forced, sooner or later, to depend upon a diet of pemmican, or food of a similar nature.