Rice can also be rendered savoury by the addition of chopped mushrooms, pepper and salt, and a little butter, and if a tin of mushrooms is used, the liquor in the tin should be added to the boiled rice, but in every case the rice should be made to absorb the liquor in which it is boiled.  Eggs can again be added, as well as grated Parmesan cheese.

A cheap and quick way of making rice savoury is to mix it with a large tablespoonful of chutney; make it hot with a little butter, and add pepper—­cayenne if preferred—­and a little lemon-juice.

Rice can also be served as savoury by boiling it in any of the sauces that may be termed savoury in distinction to those that are sweet, given in the chapter entitled “Sauces.”

RICE AND EGGS.—­Boil, say half a pound of rice, and let it absorb the water in which it is boiled.  Take four hard-boiled eggs, separate the yolks from the whites, chop the whites very fine, and add them to the rice with about a brimming teaspoonful of chopped blanched parsley and sufficient savoury herbs to cover a sixpence.  Put this in the saucepan and make it hot, with a little butter, and flavour with plenty of pepper and salt.  In the meantime beat the yellow hard-boiled yolks to a yellow powder, turn out the rice mixture, when thoroughly hot, into a vegetable dish, and put the yellow powder either in the centre or make a ring of the yellow powder round the edge of the rice, and serve a little pile of fried parsley in the middle.

RICE AND TOMATO.—­Take half-a-dozen ripe tomatoes, squeeze out the pips, and put them in a tin in the oven with a little butter to bake; baste them occasionally with a little butter.  In the meantime boil half a pound of rice in a little stock or water, only adding sufficient so that the rice can absorb the liquid.  When this is done (and this will take about the same time as the tomatoes take to bake), pour all the liquid and butter in the tin on to the rice and stir it well up with some pepper and salt.  Put this on a dish, and serve the tomatoes on the rice with the red, unbroken side uppermost.

MACARONI.—­Macaroni is a preparation of pure wheaten flour.  It is chiefly made in Italy, though a good deal is made in Geneva and Switzerland.  The best macaroni is made in the neighbourhood of Naples.  The wheat that grows there ripens quickly under the pure blue sky and hot sun, and consequently the outside of the wheat is browner while the inside of the wheat is whiter than that grown in England.  The wheat is ground and sifted repeatedly.  It is generally sifted about five times, and the pure snow-white flour that falls from the last sifting is made into macaroni.  It is first mixed with water and made into a sort of dough, the dough being kneaded in the truly orthodox Eastern style by being trodden out with the feet.  It is then forced by a sort of rough machinery through holes, partially baked during the process, and then hung up to dry.  Macaroni contains a great amount of nourishment, and it is only made from the purest and finest flour.  It is the staple dish throughout Italy, and in whatever form or way it is cooked, except as a sweet, tomatoes and grated Parmesan cheese seem bound to accompany it.