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Buisson of Lobsters or Prawns

The buisson or bush of lobsters, so often appearing in menus of banquets, is the same as would be a pyramid of anything else. It is an ornamental style of serving lobster in the shell for a large number, and sometimes the smallest lobsters are chosen for the purpose. The ways are various. The lobsters are fastened overlapping each other, tails upwards, in pyramidal form on a tall and slender evergreen bush--a Christmas tree in effect--with their claws, horns and eyes looking out menacingly from among the green. Another way is to make a pyramid of pressed corned beef incased in jelly and stick the lobsters in like form on that with silver headed skewers, filling in with greens and flowers. Prawns on the same plan and smaller scale. Little pyramids of shrimps and prawns are made by cutting a long loaf of bread in pineapple shape and sticking the unpicked shrimps all over it by their horns. Picked shrimps are similarly made to cover tall shapes moulded in cold butter. There is plenty of room to depart from these suggestions and furnish new designs. "What a pleasure it is to have a good appetite, when one is certain of soon having an excellent dinner!" * * * "Of all the qualities of a cook, the most indispensible is punctuality."--Savarin. "That all-softening, overpowering knell, The tocsin of the soul--the dinner bell." --Byron.

Some hotels now make a public exhibit of their Christmas meats and delicacies. I think sometime there will be a new fashion of parting off a portion of the dining room with a glass partition, in which room as through a shop window, the compulsorily idle guests instead of watching the clock hand drag its slow length along will be allowed to see going on the cleanly and fireless process of salad making and decoration; the construction of the latest novelties in confectioneries and boquets of fruits; the ornamentation of boned turkeys and the like after new designs furnished by the Lakeside Society of Decorative Art--Culinary Branch. Then the dining room will not be so wrapped in a dim religious light, and so formidably closed and bolted but that the shppered stewards and waiters may be seen busy with their preparations for the good dinner to come