In making pastry use the best butter you can find. Poor butter is bad enough anywhere, but nowhere so detestable as in pastry. If made with lard it looks nicer, but is by no means so good, and certainly much more hurtful than when shortened with two thirds more butter than lard. Use the hands as little as possible in making pastry; either rub in the shortening quickly, or chop it into the flour, so as not to heat it by your hands, particularly in warm weather. Wet always with cold water, and in summer with ice-cold water. Don’t touch it with your hands after you are ready to put in the water, but stir together with a knife quickly and lightly, turning it at once upon the board and roll out. Molding will make it tough. Bake in a moderately hot oven to a delicate brown. If scorched or hard baked, it will be bitter and disagreeable. If your oven does not bake so well at the bottom as at the top, the bottom crust will be very heavy and unhealthy. Before rolling out, let your pastry stand on the ice, or in a cold place for an hour, as it makes it much more flaky. In making puddings, some advise beating both whites and yelks together and then straining them. We prefer to beat separately, straining the yelks. The milk for most pies should be boiled, in which case the eggs must be added the last thing, and after the milk has become cool. In batter puddings, only a little milk should be added to the flour at a time, and all the lumps beaten out smoothly before adding more, if you would have a light batter. When berries of any kind are put into batter pudding, they should be rolled in flour and added to the batter the last thing, or they will not mix well, and will settle to the bottom and be heavy. One third more flour is requisite for a batter pudding with fruit than when plain, except with cherries. They need only a little more. If you have no tin pudding-boiler, a bowl, with a thick cloth tied tightly over, answers very well, or a thick tow or “butcher’s linen” square cloth. If a cloth is used, wring it out of cold water, and then sprinkle or spread flour over. Tie the cloth or bag very tight, but allow room to swell; plunge at once into a pot of boiling water, which must be kept constantly boiling until the pudding is done, or it will be poor and watery. Replenish the water as it wastes, by pouring boiling water from the teakettle into the pot. If there is fruit in the pudding, it should be turned over four or five times the first half-hour; if plain batter, turn it over when it has boiled ten minutes, or the flour will settle. When done, a boiled pudding must be plunged into cold water a moment, to make it separate from the cloth easily. In cutting a boiled pudding, dip the knife in hot water for a minute, or lay it on the sides of the pudding till warm, and you can cut it without making it heavy.