canned. Boil slowly four to
five hours, until the beans are tender, filling up with cold water as
that in the kettle wastes. When the beans are very soft, strain all
through a fine collander, mashing through beans and vegetables, add a
quart of very good soup stock, also a bay leaf, and boil up hard half a
minute before serving. Put into each soup plate a slice of lemon, a
slice of hard-boiled egg, and a tablespoonful of sherry wine before
adding the soup.

_Gumbo_: Cut a tender, fat chicken, nearly grown, into joints, season
well with salt and pepper, and fry for ten minutes in the fat from half
a pound of bacon, with two thick slices of ham. Then add two onions
chopped fine, six large ripe tomatoes, peeled and chopped, adding with
them their juice, half a large pod of mild red pepper, cut small, a
teaspoonful of minced thyme and parsley mixed, a pint of tender sliced
okra, stemmed and cut lengthwise. Cook altogether, watching all the
time, and stirring constantly to prevent scorching until everything is
well-browned. Then add three quarts fresh-boiled water, on the full
boil, set the pot where it will barely simmer, and cook an hour longer,
taking the same pains against scorching. Rice to eat with the gumbo--it
must never be cooked in the pot--needs to be washed until the water runs
clear from it, drained, then tossed into a wide kettle of water on the
bubbling boil, and cooked for twenty minutes. The water must be salted
to taste. Drain the rice in a collander, set it after draining in the
oven for a minute. The grains should stand out separate, but be very
tender. Rice thus cooked, and served with plenty of butter, is excellent
as a vegetable.

_Wedding Salad_: Roast unstuffed, three young tender turkeys, or six
full grown chickens. Take the white meat only, cut it fine with shears,
cutting across the grain, while hot. Let cool, then mix it with ten
hearts of crisp celery cut in bits, two heads of tender white cabbage,
finely chopped, rejecting hard stalks--use three heads if very
small--and set in a cool place. For the dressing boil thirty fresh eggs
twenty minutes, throw in cold water, shell, take out the yolks, saving
the white for garnishing, mash the yolks while hot very smooth with a
pound and a half of best butter, season them well with salt, pepper, a
little dry mustard, celery seed, and, if at hand, a dash of walnut
catsup, but not enough to discolor. Add also a teaspoonful of
sugar--this to blend flavor