Tinned Fruits.—Tinned fruits are ready for eating directly the tin is opened. All we have to bear in mind is to turn them all out of the tin on to a dish immediately. Do not leave any in the tin to be used at another time. Most tinned fruits can be served just as they are, in a glass dish, but a great improvement can be made in their appearance at a very small cost and with a very little extra trouble if we always have in the house a little preserved angelica and a few dried cherries. As these cost about a shilling or one and fourpence per pound, and even a quarter of a pound is sufficient to ornament two or three dozen dishes, the extra expense is almost nil.

Apricots, Tinned.—Pile the apricots up, with the convex side uppermost, in a glass dish, reserving one cup apricot to go on the top, with the concave side uppermost. Take a few preserved cherries, and cut them in halves, and stick half a cherry in all the little holes or spaces where the apricots meet. Cut four little green leaves out of the angelica about the size of the thumb-nail, only a little longer; the size of a filbert would perhaps describe the size better. Put a whole cherry in the apricot cup at the top, and four green leaves of angelica round it. Take the white kernel of the apricot—one or two will always be found in every tin—and cut four white slices out of the middle, place these round the red cherry, touching the cherry, and resting between the four green leaves of angelica; the top of this dish has now the appearance of a very pretty flower.

Peaches, Tinned.—These can be treated in exactly a similar way to the apricots.

Peaches and Apricots, with Cream.—Place the fruit in a glass dish, with the concave side uppermost; pour the syrup round the fruit, and with a teaspoon remove any syrup that may have settled in the little cups, for such the half-peaches or apricots may be called. Get a small jar of Devonshire clotted cream; take about half a teaspoonful of cream, and place it in the middle of each cup, and place a single preserved cherry on the top of the cream. This dish can be made still prettier by chopping up a little green angelica, like parsley, and sprinkling a few of these little green specks on the white cream.

Pine-apple, Tinned.—Pine-apples are preserved in tins whole, and are very superior in flavour to those which are sold cheap on barrows, which are more rotten than ripe. They require very little ornamenting, but the top is greatly improved by placing a red cherry in the centre, and cutting eight strips of green angelica like spikes, reaching from the cherry to the edge of the pine-apple. They should be cut in exact lengths, so as not to overlap. The top of the pine-apple looks like a green star with a red centre.