of coffee. When cream cannot be procured for coffee, the coffee will be much richer to boil it with a less proportion of water than the above rule, and weaken it with boiling-hot milk, when served out in cups.

Another way for making coffee is, to put the ground coffee into a wide-mouthed bottle overnight, and pour rather more than half a pint of water upon each ounce and a half, and to cork the bottle; in the morning to loosen the cork, put the bottle into a pan of hot water, and bring the water to a boiling heat. The coffee is then to be poured off clear, and the latter portion strained; that which is not drank immediately is kept closely stopped, and is heated as it is wanted. Coffee is adulterated with chiccory, roasted beans, pease, and acorns; but chiefly by chiccory. Having your own mill, buy the roasted beans; find out a respectable grocer, ascertain his roasting-days, and always buy from a fresh roast. If you like the flavor of chiccory, purchase it separate, and add to taste. Chiccory, in small quantities, is not, as has been represented, injurious, but healthful; because the "taraxacum" root has been used medicinally, and its name has found a place in Pharmacopoeias, it has been vulgarly set down as "physic," and thrown to the dogs. The tonic hop might be discarded upon the same pretext. Chiccory is a healthful addition to coffee, but you need not pay the coffee price for it. Grind your coffee, and mix with chiccory for yourself.

Coffee, to Roast.-Coffee should never be roasted but when you are going to use it, and then it should be watched with the greatest care, and made of a gold color; mind and do not burn it, for a few grains burnt would communicate a bitter taste to the whole; it is the best way to roast it in a roaster which turns with the hand, over a charcoal fire, as, by that means, it will not be forgotten, which is very often the case when in the oven, or before the fire.

A Substitute for Cream for Coffee.-Beat up a fresh egg, then pour boiling water on it gradually to prevent its curdling. It is difficult to distinguish it from rich cream.

Coffee Milk.-Boil a dessertspoonful of coffee in nearly a pint of milk a quarter of an hour, then put in a little isinglass and clear it, and let it boil a few minutes, and set it on the fire to grow fine.

Coffee Cream.-Mix three cups of good coffee with one pint of cream, and sugar according to taste; boil them together, and reduce them about one-third; observe that the coffee must be done as if it was for drinking alone, and settle very clear before you mix it with the cream.

Coffee, to give it the Flavor of Vanilla.-Take a handful of oats, very clean, and let them boil for five or six minutes in soft water; throw this away, and fill it up with an equal quantity, and let it boil for half an hour; then pass this decoction through a silk sieve, and use it to make your coffee, which will acquire, by this means, the flavor of vanilla, and is very nice.

CHOCOLATE.—According as you intend to make this, either with milk or water, for each cup of one or the other of these liquids put into a chocolate-pot, add one ounce of cake chocolate. Some persons dissolve the chocolate before they put it into the milk; let it boil slowly or just simmer for half an hour; add cream or milk to it, and sugar to taste; or, the sugar may be omitted until served.

Tea.-Scald the tea-pot, and if the tea is a strong kind, a teaspoonful for a pint of water is sufficient; if it is a weak kind, more will be required. Pour on just enough boiling water to cover the tea, and let it steep. Green tea should not steep more than five or six minutes before drinking; if steeped longer, it will not be lively. Black tea requires steeping ten or twelve minutes to extract the strength.

Tea is adulterated with leaves of the sycamore, horse-chestnut, and plum; with lie-tea, which is made up of tea-dust, sand and gum, to give it consistency; also with leaves of the beech, bastard plane, elm, poplar, willow, fancy oak, hawthorn, and sloe. It is colored with black-lead, rose-pink, Dutch-pink, vegetable red and yellow dyes, arsenite of copper, chromate and bichromate of potash. Green teas are more adulterated than black. They are colored with Prussian-blue, turmeric, Chinese yellow, etc., flavored with sulphate of iron, catechu-gum, la veno beno, and Chinese botanical powder. Tea-leaves that have been once used, are collected, "doctored," and again sold as fresh tea. Obtain some genuine leaves of tea, moisten them, and lay them out with gum upon paper. Press them between the leaves of books until dry. When you suspect a sample of tea, damp and unroll the leaves, and gum and dry them as genuine ones; you will then be able by comparison to detect the admixture.

HOME-MADE WINES.-Now that fruit and sugar are both so cheap, all housewives may add wines to their household stores as easily as they may preserves. The difficulty and expense of making is trifling, compared with what the latter used to be. Next to the fruit, sugar is the most important ingredient. In wine countries, the grape, under the influence of climate, contains within itself the chemical properties to produce fermentation, while with us artificial aid is compelled to be used to accomplish it. The four requisites for fermentation are sugar, vegetable extract, malic acid, and water; and upon the proper regulation of these constituents the success depends.

The fermentation requires great attention, and should neither be suffered to continue too long, nor be checked too early. Its commencement, which will be about a day after the articles have been mixed, will attract attention by the noise it makes. For a sweet wine, the cask should not be closed until the sound of fermentation has almost ceased. If a dry wine, have ready a barrel which has been subjected to the fumes of sulphur, and draw off your wine into it. Rack off the wine, clearing it with isinglass, and bottle it in about ten weeks after.

Apple-Wine.-Add to a barrel of cider the herb scurlea, the quintessence of wine, a little nitre, and a pound of syrup of honey. Let it work in the cask till clear and well settled; then draw it off, and it will be little inferior to Rhenish, either in clearness, color, or flavor.

Grape-Wine. To one gallon of grapes put one gallon of water; bruise the grapes; let them stand a week without stirring; then draw it off, and fine. Put to a gallon of wine three pounds of sugar; put it in a vessel, but it must not be stopped till it has done hissing.

Cherry-Wine. To make five pints of this wine, take fifteen pounds of cherries and two of currants; bruise them together; mix with them two-thirds of the kernels, and put the whole of the cherries, currants,

and kernels into a barrel, with a quarter of a pound of sugar to every pint of juice. The barrel must be quite full; cover the barrel with vine-leaves, and sand above them, and let it stand until it has done working, which will be in about three weeks; then stop it with a bung, and in two months' time it may be bottled.

Currant-Wine. Take sixteen pounds of currants and three gallons of water; break the currants with your hands in the water; strain it off; put to it fourteen pounds of sugar; strain it into a vessel; add a pint of brandy and a pint of raspberries; stop it down, and let it stand three months.

Another. To every pailful of currants, on the stem, put one pailful of water; mash and strain. To each gallon of the mixture of juice and water add three and a quarter pounds of sugar. Mix well, and put in your cask, which should be placed in the cellar, on the tilt, that it may be racked off in October, without stirring up the sediment. Two bushels of currants will make one barrel of wine. Four gallons of the mixture of juice and water will, after thirteen pounds of sugar are added, make five gallons of wine. The barrel should be filled within three inches of the bung, which must be made air-tight, by placing wet clay over it after it is driven in.

Elder-Wine. Pour a gallon of boiling water over every gallon of berries; let it stand twelve hours; then draw it off, and boil it up with three pounds and a half of sugar; when boiling, beat up the whites of some eggs, and clarify it; skim and clarify it; skim it clear; then add half an ounce of pounded ginger to every gallon of the wine; boil it a little longer before you put it in the tub; when cool, put in a toast rubbed in yeast; let it ferment a day or two, after which put it into a barrel previously rinsed with brandy. All wines should be lukewarm when the yeast is added to it.

Raspberry-Wine.-Take three pounds of raisins, wash, clean, and stone them thoroughly; boil two gallons of spring-water for half an hour; as soon as it is taken off the fire pour it into a deep stone jar, and put in the raisins, with six quarts of raspberries and two pounds of loafsugar; stir it well together, and cover them closely, and set it in a cool place; stir it twice a day, then pass it through a sieve; put the liquor into a close vessel, adding one pound more loaf-sugar; let it stand for a day and night to settle, after which bottle it, adding a little more sugar.

THE COOK'S TABLE

OF

WEIGHTS AND MEASURES,

By which persons not having scales and weights at hand may readily measure the articles wanted to form any recipe, without the trouble of weighing. Allowance to be made for an extraordinary dryness or moisture of the article weighed or measured.

MISCELLANEOUS PRACTICAL RECEIPTS IN HOUSEHOLD ECONOMY.

WASHING. This is the most difficult and laborious of household duties; and he that shall render its performance shorter and easier will be a public benefactor. Improvements have been made in this as in other arts; and if they were more widely known and generally practiced, this difficult duty would be rendered much more efficient and less tedious than it now is.

Washing Made Easy.-Any family that will use the following receipt will find it worth to them every year more than twice the cost of this book. It saves much time and hard labor, and also much injury in the wearing of clothes. It is not to be used for colored clothes. It is used extensively in England and on the continent, and, it is hoped, will become as general in this country. We have found it to be all that is

claimed for it. The advantage of this over all others, is in the use of lime, which, without in the least injuring the texture of garments, makes them, by its strong bleaching qualities, a beautiful white.

First, select from the clothes to be washed all the coarse and dirtiest pieces from the fine; then put them in separate tubs of soft water to soak overnight (the night previous to washing). Then prepare, in a separate vessel, the liquid for a large washing, namely, half a pound of good brown soap, cut in small pieces, half a pound of soda, and three ounces of fresh unslacked lime, mixed in one gallon of boiling soft water. Stir well up, so as to mix the ingredients, and let it stand until morning. Then strain off the liquid, being careful to leave all sediment behind. Having ready ten gallons or so of boiling soft water in your boiler, pour in the prepared liquid (keeping out all settlings that may yet be remaining), then throw in your clothes and boil them twenty minutes or half an hour; previous to which, put an earthen plate at the bottom of the boiler, to prevent the clothes from burning. After boiling the appointed time, take them out; scald them, blue them, and rinse them in clean soft water, warm or cold, and your clothes will be as clean and white as snow.

By this method, the finest linens, laces, cambrics, etc., can be readily and easily cleansed with VERY LITTLE TROUBLE. No rubbing the skin off your hands and tearing the clothes to pieces; and the washing for a family of twenty persons completed before breakfast; have the clothes out to dry, the house in good order, all comfortable again for the day, and the family saved from washing-day annoyances. Who would not wish to have such comforts?

Should there be only a small washing, and less than ten gallons of water required to boil them in, less of the liquid of lime, soap and soda can be used in proportion. When there is any difficulty in procuring fresh lime, a quantity of the liquor may be made at once from the lime, which will keep for years, corked in bottles and ready for use.

Another Method of Washing-occupying exactly One Hour.-Have a preparation made from two tablespoonfuls of alcohol, two ditto spirits of turpentine, half a pound of brown soap, cut fine and mixed in one quart of hot water. Pour the same into a large tub of boiling water, and allow the clothes to soak for twenty minutes; then take them out and put them in a tub of clean cold water for twenty minutes. Afterward boil them in a like quantity of the above preparation for the other twenty minutes, and rinse in cold water.

N. B. In using either of the above methods of washing, all fine clothes should be gone through with first, as colored, very dirty, or greasy clothes ought not to be boiled with those of a finer fabric, and containing less dirt, as the water in which they are boiled must of course partake more or less of its contents. The same water that has been used for the finer clothes will likewise do for coarse and colored. Should the wristbands of the shirts be very dirty, a little soap may be previously rubbed on.

The above is a very excellent receipt, and may be confided in as particularly effective in labor saving.

Another Receipt.-Take one pint of alcohol, one pint spirits of tur