ashed butter may take its
place; but if you are told to use cream for charlotte russe or trifles,
there is no way in which you could make milk serve, since it is not an
accessory but the chief part of those dishes. For a cake in which cream
is used, butter whipped to a cream may take its place. Wine is usually
optional in savory dishes; it gives richness only.

Again, in cakes be very careful the exact proportions of flour, eggs,
and milk are observed; of butter you can generally use more or less,
having a more or less rich cake in proportion. In any but plain cup
cakes (which greatly depend on soda and acid for their lightness) never
lessen the allowance of eggs; never add milk if a cake is too stiff (but
an extra egg may always be used), unless milk is ordered in the recipe,
when more or less may be used as needed. Flavoring may be always varied.

In reducing a recipe always reduce _every ingredient_, and it can make
no difference in the results. Sometimes, in cookery books, you are told
to use articles not frequently found in ordinary kitchens; for instance,
a larding-needle (although that can be bought for twenty-five cents at
any house-furnishing store, and should always be in a kitchen); but, in
case you have not one for meat, you may manage by making small cuts and
inserting slips of bacon.

Another article that is very useful, but seldom, if ever, to be found in
small kitchens, is a salamander; but when you wish to brown the top of a
dish, and putting it in the oven would not do, or the oven is not quick
enough to serve, an iron shovel, made nearly red, and a few red cinders
in it, is a very good salamander. It must be held over the article that
requires browning near enough to color it, yet not to burn.

In the recipes I have given nothing is required that cannot be obtained,
with more or less ease, in New York. For syrups, fruit juices, etc.,
apply to your druggist; if he has not them he will tell you where to
obtain them. We often make up our minds that because a thing is not
commonly used in this country, it is impossible to get it. Really there
are very few things not to be got in New York City to the intelligent
seeker. You need an article of French or Italian or may be English
grocery, that your grocer, a first-class one, perhaps, has not, and you
make up your mind you cannot get it. But go into the quarters where
French people live, and you can get everything belonging to the French
_cuisine_. So prej