UDDING.--Moisten two cupfuls of finely grated Graham
bread crumbs with half a cup of thin sweet cream. Mix into it a heaping
cupful of finely chopped fresh figs, and a quarter of a cup of sugar.
Add lastly a cup of sweet milk. Turn all into a pudding dish, and steam
about two and one half hours. Serve as soon as done, with a little cream
for dressing, or with orange or lemon sauce.

PASTRY AND CAKE.

So much has been said and written about the dietetic evils of these
articles that their very names have been almost synonymous with
indigestion and dyspepsia. That they are prolific causes of this dire
malady cannot be denied, and it is doubtless due to two reasons; first,
because they are generally compounded of ingredients which are in
themselves unwholesome, and rendered doubly so by their combination; and
secondly, because tastes have become so perverted that an excess of
these articles is consumed in preference to more simple and nutritious
food.

As has been elsewhere remarked, foods containing an excess of fat, as do
most pastries and many varieties of cake, are exceedingly difficult of
digestion, the fat undergoing in the stomach no changes which answer to
the digestion of other elements of food, and its presence interferes
with the action of the gastric juice upon other elements. In
consequence, digestion proceeds very slowly, if at all, and the delay
often occasions fermentative and putrefactive changes in the entire
contents of the stomach.

It is the indigestibility of fat, and this property of delaying the
digestion of other foods, chiefly that render pastry and cakes so
deleterious to health.

We do not wish to be understood as in sympathy with that class of people
who maintain that dyspepsia is a disciplinary means of grace, when,
after having made the previous statement, we proceed to present recipes
for preparing the very articles we have condemned. Pie and cake are not
necessarily utterly unwholesome; and if prepared in a simple manner, may
be partaken of in moderation by persons with good digestion.
Nevertheless, they lack the wholesomeness of more simple foods, and we
most fully believe that would women supply their tables with perfectly
light, sweet, nutritious bread would cease. However, if pies and cakes
must needs be, make them as simple as possible.

GENERAL SUGGESTIONS FOR MAKING PIES.--Always prepare the filling
for pies before making the crust, if the filling is to be cooked in the
crus