an excellent illustration of the proverb, “Penny wise and pound foolish,” for though a few pence might be saved, the spoiling of the food would be a much more serious expense. Cooked in these bags, everything would taste unpleasantly of paper, even if the cooking were otherwise successfully carried out.

A much graver matter would be the danger to health. The paper, not manufactured for cooking purposes, might have something injurious in its composition, or the paste used in joining the bags might contain some harmful substance, so that a doctor's bill would make the cost of the bags got without payment far in excess of those manufactured for the purpose, and sold for a very small sum.

HOW THE BAGS SHOULD BE FASTENED.

When the food has been placed in the bags, the openings must, of course, be secured, for the whole essence of this method lies in the complete exclusion of the air, and the sealing up of the juices and flavour of the food that it may cook in its own steam.

HOW TO FIX THE CLIPS.

Once the joint is in the paper-bag, the opening to the bag must be clipped down. First turn the corners down, as in the first fold, then bring the top of the bag over, leaving sloping corners. The clips can then be inserted.

Now, the question is, how to fasten the food in the bag in the most secure manner. Clips can be obtained with the bags, and these are excellent. Safety-pins are not advisable, as they are apt to tear the paper when being adjusted. On no account must ordinary pins be used, for they are easily overlooked when removing the paper, and lying unnoticed on the meat dish, might be conveyed to a plate and be inadvertently swallowed.

GREASING THE BAGS.

There is a great difference of opinion about this, some cooks greasing each bag inside and outside without any regard to what is being cooked; some grease only in special cases, and others do not use grease at all. It is, however, quite necessary to freely grease the inside of the bags containing fish or pudding, otherwise the food will stick to the bag, and although it is not wise to thickly grease one containing a joint, especially a fat joint, yet the meat itself should be lightly rubbed over with a morsel of dripping or vegetable lard to prevent the paper sticking to it. Butter should not be used, as it gives meat a bad colour.

To find out whether the food is cooked, just press the bag with one finger. If it feels tender, it is quite all right.

If the bag containing a joint be thickly greased inside and out, the interior of the oven will be greasy and will smell, thus doing away with two of the benefits of paper-bag cookery—cleanliness and freedom from smell.

THE COOKING OF DIFFERENT DISHES TOGETHER.

If a joint of meat is being roasted in an oven in the ordinary way, nothing else may be cooked at the same time, unless it be a Yorkshire pudding or baked potatoes, which are placed below the meat expressly to catch the dripping and the gravy.

If the rash cook ventured to put in several articles of food at once, disaster would be the result. The tart would savour of roast pork, the meat taste of onions, or the baked fish would give its own special flavour to everything else in the oven. Apart from this, the heat required to cook the joint would curdle the milk pudding, and the gentle warmth required for the custard would leave the steak in an almost raw condition. Then, too, the necessity of hanging the joint from the bar at the top of the gas-cooker leaves very little room for anything else.

In paper-bag cookery, the most varied assortment of dishes will lie amicably side by side on the grid supplied with the gas-cookers, and no mingling of flavours or spoiling of one or the other will result. Cooking them thus altogether, an immense saving in time and in expense for heating is effected. Even the savoury onion will cook placidly by the side of a bag of gooseberries, without imparting its flavour to the fruit.

While cooking is going on, the oven door can be freely opened without risk of spoiling anything by the admission of cold air, which, of course, would be fatal to the contents of the oven in ordinary cooking.

THE CLEANLINESS OF PAPER-BAG COOKERY.

When dinner has been successfully cooked, dished up, and eaten, the labours of the cook are by no means ended, for then comes the distasteful business of clearing up. The oven must be cleaned while it is still hot, the interior well scrubbed out with hot water and soda to free it from the grease which will cause such an unpleasant smell next time the oven is used. The baking tin must next be attended to, and then comes the array of saucepans, stewpans, and frying-pans which have been used, and which are often so difficult to scour that one can understand and almost forgive the hard-driven “general” who puts them away in a dirty condition, trusting to be able to clean them some time before they are again required. In this particular, the contrast between paper-bag and ordinary cooking is most striking.

The meat having been cooked in a bag, there is no grease to be scrubbed from the oven, and none on the bars of the grid where it has lain; the interior of the cooker is perfectly clean; there is no baking or dripping-pan to be cleansed with hot water and plenty of soda; there are no saucepans to scour.

When the paper bags have been disposed of, there remain only the plates, knives, forks, and spoons to wash up, and that over, cook may sit down to rest. This, in itself, is such an immense saving of labour and time, that the mistress who adopts “Papakukery” may be said to have gone far towards solving the servant problem.

THE BEST OVEN TO USE.

A gas-cooker is undoubtedly the best for paper-bag cookery, as the ease with which the heat is regulated, and a steady even degree maintained, the little attention it requires while the food is cooking, make it ideal for all ways of preparing food, but especially for the method now under consideration. Gas is absolutely perfection for paper-bag cookery. But all houses are not supplied with gas, and even if they are, the economical housewife may prefer to cook by coal fires, at all events in winter, when the kitchen-range is alight all day long, or when it is going for the purpose of getting hot water for baths.

An ordinary coal heated kitchen-range will answer very well for paper-bag cookery, if a little care and attention be given to the matter. The cook must firmly impress on her mind that the bags must not be laid on a solid baking sheet, but on a wire grid, which may be cheaply acquired at an ironmonger's; that the oven must be heated to 220° Fahr. before the food is put into it—a cooking thermometer is not an expensive item; and that, though the heat may be lessened after some twenty minutes, the fire must not be allowed to go down and then be built up again to complete the cookery.

If the bags are put on a hot baking sheet, the cooking will be a failure, because it is necessary for the hot air to circulate round the food and completely surround it; besides, the bags will burst as soon as they are laid on a hot solid surface.

When cooking in a gas oven, it must be