DOMESTIC COOKERY SCIENCE

Always get your material for breakfast ready over night ; fix the fire all ready to light, fill the tea kettle, grind the coffee and prepare the potatoes, and thus you can sleep half an hour longer in the morning.

Every housekeeper should have "a place for everything and every- thing in its place" framed and hung in a conspicuous place and follow the directions.

Keep your salt and pepper boxes on a little shelf back of or near the stove and save your steps.

Lard requires no other care than to be kept in a dry, cool place. Pack butter in a clean, scalded firkin ; cover it with a strong brine and spread a cloth all over the top. If you have a bit of saltpetre dissolve it with the brine. Butter comes more easily and has a peculiar hard- ness and sweetness, if the cream is scalded and strained before it is used. The cream should stand down cellar over night, after being scalded, that it may get perfectly cold. Suet and lard keep better in tin than in earthen. Suet will keep good the year around, if chopped and packed down in a stone jar covered with molasses.

Do not let Coffee and Tea stand in tin. .Scald your wooden ware often, and keep the tin ware perfectly dry. Wash dishes in a wooden bowl and there will be less danger from breaking, or scratching of the silver ware.

Keep Salt in a dry place ; yeast in wood or glass ; fresh lard in tin vessels ; vinegar in wood or glass ; preserves and jellies in glass ; meal and flour in a cool, dry place.

Sugar is an admirable ingredient in curing meat and fish. Crusts and pieces of bread should be kept in an earthen jar, closely covered, in

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a dry, cool place. Lard for pastry should be used hard as it can be cut with a knife. It should be cut through the flour, not rubbed.

Poor Flour should never be bought for bread ; the best is cheapest. Pans for wheat bread should be greased very lightly, either with butter or lard ; for rye, Indian or Graham, they must be greased more thor- ougly, as the dough clings to the pans more. Bread or anything con- taining much starch should be eaten slowly. A crust of French bread eaten very slowly at the beginning of a meal often improves the appe- tite of delicate people.

Good flour is not tested by its color. White flour may not be the best. The test of good flour is the amount of water it absorbs.

Meats. — In boiling meat for soup, use cold water to extract the juices. If the meat is wanted for itself alone, plunge in boiling water at once. . . . To prevent meat from scorchmg during roasting, place a basin of water in the oven. The steam generated prevents scorching, and makes the meat cook better, . . . Broil steak without salting. Salt draws the juices in cooking; it is desirable to keep these in if possible. •Cook over a hot fire, turning frequently, searing on both sides. Place on a platter ; salt and pepper to taste. . . . Beef having a tendency to be tough can be made very palatable by stewing gently for two hours, with pepper and salt, taking out about a pmt of the liquor when half done, and letting the rest boil into the meat. Brown the meat in the pot. After taking up, make a gravy of the pint of liquor saved. . . . Cutlets and steaks should be fried as well as broiled, but they must be put in hot butter or lard. The grease is hot enough when it throws off a bluish smoke. ... In cooking a fowl, to ascertain when it is done, put a skewer into the breast, and if the breast is tender the fowl is done. . . . A roast of beef is much nicer if, when you put it into the pan to bake, you set it on the hot stove ; let it brown on one side, then turn and brown on the other ; then add the hot water and seasoning and bake in a hot oven and the juice is retained in the meat. . . . Meat and poultry will lose their flavor and firmness if left in the water after they are done ; as will also fish, which will break to pieces. ... A spoonful of stewed tomatoes in the gravy of either roasted or fried meats is an improve- ment. ... A Uttle ginger put into sausage

Vegetables should not be washed until just before cooking. ... If the hands are kept in water while peeling and slicing onions the eyes will not suffer. It is particularly desirable that this should be done when preparing small onions to pickle. . . . Turnip-peel, washed clean and tied in a net, imparts a flavor to soups. Celery leaves and ends serve the same purpose. . . . Have all the good bits of vegetables and meats collected after dinner and minced before they are set away, that 13

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they may be in readiness to make a little savory mince meat for supper or breakfast. Take the skins off potatoes before they are cold. . . . Cucumbers if sliced into very cold vi^ater will be made crisp and better, even if not perfectly fresh. . . . Onions may be soaked all night without taking the flavor out of them. . , . Potatoes ought not to stand too long in water, for it takes the starch out of them and makes them tasteless. . . . Old potatoes may be freshened up by plunging them into cold water before cooking. . . . To bake potatoes quickly, pour boiling water over them and let them stand a minute or so before putting into the oven. . . .To boil potatoes so they will be dry and mealy, when the skin breaks pour off the water and let them finish cooking in their own steam. . . . Potatoes at any time of the year can be made mealy if boiled in salt water and drained and then covered with a thick towel and left in the back of the range five minutes. . . . Cold potatoes, mashed with peas, make an excellent and light peas pudding. . . . There is a green- ness in onions and potatoes that render them hard to digest. For health's sake put them in warm water for an hour before cooking. . . . A lump of bread about the size of a billiard ball, tied up in a linen bag and placed in the pot in which greens are boilmg will absorb the gases which oftentimes send such an unpleasant odor to the regions above, or a small piece of charcoal in the pot with boiling cabbage removes the smell. The reason why cabbage emits such a disagreeable smell when boiling is because the process dissolves the essential oil. The water should be changed when the cabbage is half boiled, and it wil

In making Crust of any kind, do not melt the lard in flour. Melting will injure the crust.

In boiling dumplings of any kind, put them in the water one at a time. If they are put in together they will mix with each other.

If you flavor a rhubarb pie with nutmeg it will improve it greatly and make it taste like a fresh apple pie.

To brown sugar for sauce or puddings, put the sugar in a perfectly dry saucepan. If the pan is the least bit wet, the sugar will burn and you will spoil your saucepan.

Whenever you see your sauce boil from the sides of the pan you may know your flour or corn-starch is done.

Sour Apple Sauce is greatly improved by the addition of a table- spoonful of butter to a quart of sauce, and, moreover, there is much less sugar needed. A little lemon peel makes a fine flavor.

Jelly Molds should be greased with cold butter. When you wish to

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remove the jelly or pudding, plunge the mold into hot water, remove quickly, and the contents will come out in perfect form and without any trouble.

Never put a pudding that is to be steamed in anything else than a dry mold.

To clean raisins, wipe them with a dry towel. Never wash them, for it will make cakes or puddings heavy.

If ripe cherries are put in water the wormy ones will always rise.

In making any sauce, put the butter and flour in together and your sauce will never be lumpy.

To brown sugar for puddings, put the sugar on in a perfectly dry pan. If the pan is the least wet the sugar will burn and spoil both it and the pan.

Biscuits broken, and the crumbs are good for puddings.

Morning's milk is richer than that of evening.

Single Cream is cream that has stood on the milk twelve hours. It is the best for tea and coffee. Double cream stands on its milk twenty- four hours, and cream for butter frequently stands forty-eight hours. Cream that is to be whipped should not be butter cream, lest in whip- ping it change to butter.

When milk sours, scalding will render it sweet again. The whey separates from the curd, and the former is better than shortening in bread.

Take a cup of cream off the milk pans every morning when you make bread ; it will make the bread moist, white and delicate, and you will hardly miss it from the cream.

To beat the Whites of Eggs quickly, put in a pinch of salt. The cooler the eggs the quicker they will froth. Salt cools and also freshens them.

In boiling eggs hard put them in boiling water ten minutes, and then put them in cold water. It will prevent the yolks from coloring black.

In icing cakes, dip the knife frequently into cold water.

Bread. — As far as it is possible, have bits of bread eaten before they become hard. Spread those that are not eaten, and let them dry, to be pounded for puddings, or soaked for brewis. Brewis is made of crusts and dry pieces ot bread, soaked a good while in hot milk, mashed, salted and buttered like*toast. Above all, do not let crusts accumulate in such quantities that they cannot be used. The water used in mixing bread must be tepid hot. If it is too hot the loaves will be full of holes.

If you wish to do away with the use of grease on the griddle for baking cakes, have the ordinary iron griddle ground smooth on a grind- stone and rubbed off with a piece of fine sandpaper wrapped round a block of wood. This is much better than a soapstone griddle.

The Lemon Syrup bought at stores can be made at home much

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cheaper. Take a pound of Havana sugar, boil it in water down to a quart, drop in the white of an eg-gto clarify it, strain it, add one-quarter of an ounce of tartaric or citric acid. If you do not find it sour enough after it has stood two or three days, add more of the acid. A few drops of oil of lemon improve it.

If you wish to clarify sugar and water that you are about to boil, it is well to stir in the white of an &gg, while cold ; if put in after it boils, the ^g% is apt to get hardened before it can do any good.

Tea should not be infused for more than seven minutes. Have the water boiling, and use a teaspoonful of tea for each person and one over. Put the tea in the pot, pour the boiling water over it and let it stand for seven minutes. If it is allowed to stand, the tannin in the tea is drawn out, and dyspepsia is the result.

A French chemist asserts that if tea be ground like coffee immedi- ately before hot water is poured upon it, it will yield nearly double the amount of its exhilarating qualities.

A few egg-shells put in the coffee-pot, with half a cup of cold water, shaken well, the coffee added, and then the hot water, will settle it as clear as a whole &^^.

The white of one &gg, beaten to a froth with a little butter, is a good substitute for cream in coffee.

Mustard should be mixed with water that has been boiled and allowed to cool. Hot water destroys its essential qualities, and raw, cold water might cause it to ferment. Put the mustard in a cup with a small pinch of salt and mix with it very gradually sufficient boiling water to make it drop from the spoon without becoming watery.

To make Macaroni tender, put it in cold water and bring it to a boil. It will then be much more tender than if put into hot water or stewed in milk.

Lemons may be kept fresh a long time by putting them into a jar of water and changing the water every morning.

A small spoonful of molasses added to buckwheat batter each morn- ing will make the cakes tem,ptingly brown.

A spoonful of sugar, added to dried corn when seasoning, improves it.

When molasses is used in cooking it is an improvement to boil and skim it before you use it. It takes out the unpleasant, raw taste, and makes it almost as good as sugar.

Cheese is very nice for the table grated.

Salt provisions of whatever kind are said to lose more of their salt- ness by being soaked in sea water than in fresh.

Cut hot bread or cake with a hot knife, and it will not be clammy.

To make Welsh rarebit, fresh cheese is cut into slices, put upon but- tered toast and laid in a cheese toaster until melted.

If half a tablespoonful of vinegar is added to the dark portion of marble cake it improves it.

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When anything is accidentally made too salt, it can be counteracted by adding a teaspoonful of vinegar and a teaspoonful of sugar.

A few dried or preserved cherries, with stones out, are the very best thing possible to garnish sweet dishes.

If your coal fire is low, throw on a tablespoonful of salt, and it will help it very much.

Many Soups are better on the day after they are made, provided they are not warmed too quickly, or left too long over the fire, after they have become hot.

Apple pips impart a fine flavor to tarts and dumplings.

Boiled Fowl wth sauce, over which is grated the yolks of eggs, is a magnificent dish for luncheon.

Fish may be scaled much easier by dipping them in boiling water for a minute.