It is criminal to serve curry during the _entrée_ period of dinner. And it is worse form still to hand it round after gooseberry tart and cream, and trifle, as I have seen done at one great house. In the land of its birth, the spicy pottage invariably precedes the sweets. Nubbee Bux marches solemnly round with the mixture, in a deep dish, and is succeeded by Ram Lal with the rice. And in the Madras Presidency, where _dry_ curry is served as well as the other brand, there is a procession of three brown attendants. Highly-seasoned dishes at the commencement of a long meal are a mistake; and this is one of the reasons why I prefer the middle cut of a plain-boiled Tay salmon, or the tit-bit of a lordly turbot, or a flake or two of a Grimsby cod, to a _sole Normande_, or a red mullet stewed with garlic, mushrooms, and inferior claret. I have even met _homard à l'Américaine_, during the fish course, at the special request of a well-known Duke. The soup, too, eaten at a large dinner should be as plain as possible; the edge being fairly taken off the appetite by such concoctions as _bisque_, _bouillabaisse_, and _mulligatawny_--all savoury and tasty dishes, but each a meal in itself. Then I maintain that to curry whitebait is wrong; partly because curry should on no account be served before roast and boiled, and partly because the flavour of the whitebait is too delicate for the fish to be clad in spices and onions. The lesson which all dinner-givers ought to have learnt from the Ancient Romans--the first people on record who went in for æsthetic cookery--is that highly-seasoned and well-peppered dishes should figure at the end, and not the commencement of a banquet. Here follows a list of some of the productions of Nature which it is allowable to curry. _What to Curry._ TURBOT. SOLE. COD. LOBSTER. CRAYFISH. PRAWNS,--but _not_ the so-called "DUBLIN PRAWN," which is delicious when eaten plain boiled, but no good in a curry. WHELKS.[6] OYSTERS. SCALLOPS. MUTTON. VEAL. PORK. CALF'S HEAD. OX PALATE. TRIPE.[6] EGGS. CHICKEN. RABBIT (the "bunny" lends itself better than anything else to this method of cooking). PEASE. KIDNEY BEANS.[6] VEGETABLE MARROW. CARROTS. PARSNIPS. BAMBOO SHOOTS. LOCUST LEGS.