The Dresden patties she wanted Marta to understand making, because they were so easy, so useful, and so pretty. With a view to making them, Molly had kept half a stale loaf that was as light as baker’s bread,—too light, she thought, for the table; from it she cut two slices two inches thick and from them she cut, with a medium sized biscuit-cutter, three rounds; the cutter was simply a circle of tin with a handle over it, so that the cutter went right through the bread; had it had a top to prevent it going through, she would have cut them with a half-pound baking-powder box. On the top of each round of bread she cut a smaller circle as for pastry patties; now she beat an egg, added half a pint of milk with a pinch of salt, and stood the three patties in it, telling Marta to let them stay so at least an hour, turning them about, but being careful not to break them, the idea being to let the egg and milk soak well into them, and to make them as moist as possible without breaking. It will be remembered that one sweetbread only was cooked two days ago; the other was now cut into dice, two tea-spoonfuls of flour and butter and a gill of stock made into béchamel sauce, and the sweetbreads put to it with a table-spoonful of oyster liquor (as she happened to have it). This thinned the sauce sufficiently to let the sweetbreads cook in it without burning. By the time they were done the sauce would be reduced again and very thick (or, if it should not be, the sweetbreads would be taken out, and the sauce boiled fast and stirred till very thick). Marta had the lard ready, very hot indeed, when Molly came out to show her how to fry the patties. She put them to drain, using a cake-turner, for they would not bear handling. “At some times these are rolled in flour, at others in egg and crumbs, and I think they are prettier for crumbing; but it is not necessary, and I will save an egg. Now I am going to drop them into the fat, which is as hot as it can be without burning. Stand aside, for it will splutter very much.” Each one was dropped from the end of the cake-turner, and, as Molly said, they “spluttered.” “I leave them on the very hottest part of the fire, because they are filled with cold custard, which will keep the temperature about right for five minutes; then draw them a little aside if they are brown, and let them remain two minutes.” When taken up they were a bright brown, looking almost like a doughnut that had been shaped like a small Charlotte Russe. The centre was then scooped out, leaving about half an inch of crust all round, which was filled with the fricasseed sweetbreads piled in the centre. “The beauty of these patties is that they can be made early and heated in the oven, and that they are suitable for dessert with preserves, or are excellent filled with any kind of rich minced meat or oysters.”