I have no doubt but that these directions will be followed by several young ladies with a taste for drawing. I should feel much obliged if they would write and tell if their first attempt was successful.
If you want to see these cut flowers in perfection, take a walk down Covent-Garden Market, where, if you choose to pay for it, you can receive lessons in artificial vegetable-flower making.
Next stick our flower, whether real or artificial, in the turkey; the shape of the bird and a little taste will tell you about where.
A tongue can be glazed in an exactly similar manner, a curly paper frill tied round the root, and a flower placed on it.
So, too, a ham can be glazed. But there is one method of ornamenting a ham which deserves notice.
We will suppose the ham ready glazed. Have you ever seen one, the top round the rim ornamented with a white substance which looks like beautiful white fresh butter, or even sugar?
Now, it is very easy to ornament a glazed ham with this composition, and one advantage is, you can put words on the ham, such as “A Merry Christmas,” or, on the occasion of a child’s birthday, the name of the hero of the feast.
The way to do it is as follows:—Get some nice white clarified lard, and melt it in a cup in the oven, and add a little salad oil to it, so as to make it thinner when it is cold.
Next roll up a sheet of fairly stiff note-paper like a cone, and hold this cone near the point in the right hand. Pour a little of the hot lard into the cone, and so regulate the pressure on the paper with the right-hand thumb and finger as to allow the melted lard to drop out or run out in a very thin stream at the point. This lard will settle directly it comes out, and turn quite white on getting perfectly cold. I would advise you to practise designs on a black shining tea-tray, as it will scrape off with a spoon and do again. With a little practice and a natural gift for such things—for a clumsy-fisted Mary Ann would make an awful mess of it—it is wonderful what beautiful designs can be formed this way, such as a harp or a rose.
In making a spiral border round the edge of the ham, it sometimes looks a little prettier to have a small pink spot in the centre of each circle. This is done by simply colouring the melted lard with a few drops of cochineal. But I would warn you against having too much pink in ornamenting. Just a touch, as in the case of the turnip-flower, is all very well, but it must be but a touch. We wish some persons would bear this in mind in using rouge.