USES FOR SOUR MILK AND BUTTERMILK

Bonny Clabber. put skim milk into a glass dish or into tea cups and set away until it becomes solid. Then eat with sugar and powdered cinnamon sprink- led over it.

Set thick sour milk where it will

heat gradually till the curd separates,

then pour into a bag and let it drip till dry. Salt

well, and add a little cream or milk and melted butter.

Sour Milk and Buttermilk. 65

1st. As a drink. For this it should

Buttermilk. , » ,

be very fresh. 2d. Buttermilk soup. (Seepage 123.)

Both buttermilk and sour milk can Uses for both. , ,

1st. In making soda biscuit dough (see page 102.)

2d. In pancakes of all kinds (see page 103.)

3d. In corn bread (see page 103.)

4th. In some kinds of cake, as in gingerbread, cookies and doughnuts, where they are by many cooks preferred to sweet milk; and in almost any kind of cake sour milk may be -substituted for sweet, remembering always to use only half the quantity of cream of tartar called for in the recipe.

FATS A1STD OILS.

The third food principle, Fats, stands between the two great nutrients, Proteids on the one hand and Carbohydrates on the other, and we find that we can indulge in considerable latitude as to its use. When we wish to get our food in a more condensed form, we can use fats freely in connection with proteids and lessen the amount of carbohydrates. In army dietaries the amount of fat is largely increased for marching, and for great exertion the quantity be- comes three times that allowed in garrison life. For instance, the daily rations served out to the German soldiers in France during the month of August, 1870, contained

Proteids Fats Carbohydrates

Army Dietary. .,..,», ~0~ 00.

157 gms. 285 gms. 331 gms.

It was represented by 1 Ib. 10 oz. of bread, about 1^ Ibs. of meat, and over -J Ib. of bacon besides an allowance of coffee, tobacco and wine or beer. Prof. Ranke has called this an admirable diet for fighting men. In garrison life these soldiers would have re- ceived only 56 grams of fat, and 120 grams of pro- teids while the carbohydrates would have been in- creased to 500 grams or more.

On the other hand, fat when coupled with enough carbohydrate food can replace some of the proteid, and often does so in the food of hardy and econom-

Importance of Fats. 67

Diet of Bavarian ical people. The Bavarian woodchop- woodchopper. per is enabled by his splendid digestion to arrange his diet in the following way : he takes little proteid from the animal kingdom, but in order to get enough of it from vegetable products, he must, as we know, take in an immense quantity of the starch associated with it, and to this he adds a great quantity of fat. Von Liebig says that such a man takes on the average

Proteids Fats Carbohydrates

112 gms. 309 gms. 691 gms.

We see therefore that we can have a sliding scale for fat; that while we should not go below 2 oz. a day, we may, in case we lower one or both of the other two great constituents, go up to 8 or 9 oz. importance of People belonging to the well-to-do Fat not realized, classes, unless they have given special study to the subject, seldom realize the importance of fat in our economy. Fat means to them fat meat, suet, lard and the like, and the much eating of these is considered proof of a gross appetite; they do not consider how much fat they take in eggs, in milk, in grains like oatmeal and maize, in the - seasoning of their varied dishes, and in their well-fattened meats, where, as in an average piece from a very fat mutton, they eat twice as much fat as proteid without knowing it.

Indeed, a well fed man of the upper classes may have more fat in his daily diet than has the freshly arrived Mechlenburg laborer who spreads a quarter inch layer of lard on his bread. The latter cannot take his fat in unsuspected forms ; he craves this

68 Substitutes for Butter.

principle with his plain vegetable diet, and must take it as he can get it.

Now let us understand that where economy is to be considered, this question of fat does not take care of itself as it does for the rich man. The economical housewife should always keep in mind that she must furnish her family enough fat, and furnish it cheaply. Substitutes for Butter is a dear fat ; count out the Butter. water in it and see what it costs you. We must economize in butter in as many ways as possible. We must eat more fat meat, first, that which is ingrained with the lean where it takes the place of water, as we have seen under "Proteids," costing us practically nothing; when we eat our vegetables seasoned with such a piece of meat, we find them sufficiently seasoned. We must also eat more of fat meat which we recognize as such, taking pains to cook it so that it will be palatable; the crisp, brown outside of a roast is always welcome, but the fat of boiled beef or mutton will also be relished if served very hot. An excellent selection in low- priced beef, is the fat middle rib ; the lean part is very tender and juicy when cooked in water at a low temperature for two or three hours ( or in Heat Saver, see page 44, for three or four hours ) and the fat, if served hot, any but a pampered taste will relish. Too much cannot be said in praise of pork as furnish- ing a good tasting and cheap fat ; it can be cooked in many ways and used to flavor vegetables, etc. Digestibility of It is consoling to the economist to Fat. know that little of this food prin-

ciple will be wasted in the body. Fat is more com-

Artificial Butter. 69

pletely absorbed, according to the testimony of the experimenters, than any other kind of food, even meat.

We want to say a few words as to the character of different animal fats, and then we are done with this subject.

All the fats consumed by us, without exception, are composed of three bodies called neutral fats, mixed together in varying proportions. These three bodies are "olein," "palmatin" (margarin), and "stearin," and the chief difference between them is that they melt at different temperatures; the more olein a fat has, the more easily it melts, and the less it has, the more it is like tallow. In vegetable oils, we find in addition to these, small quantities of what are called "fatty acids," and in butter we have beside the three common fats, a small per cent of four scarcer ones.

Practically therefore, all fats are alike, and when absorbed they do the same work in the body, their varying flavors and their colors having nothing to do with this.

However, their flavor, their appearance and the ease with which they melt in the mouth and in the digestive tract have much to do with our estimation of them as foods. Mutton fat will do our body the same service as butter, but because of the relatively small amount of olein it contains, we have difficulty in swallowing it.

As to the comparative digestibility of these fats, it is generally admitted that those which melt at a low temperature, like butter and vegetable oils, are most

70 Artificial Butter.

readily taken up by the system; it is thought that we could digest beeswax if it would melt in the stomach. Still, although butter stands in common estimation as the most digestible, as it is the most palatable of the fats, the stomach finds no trouble in disposing of reasonable amounts of any fat used in the household.

The fact that all fats are so similar

Artificial Butter. .

in composition, and that, it once di- gested, they will do the same service in the body, first led scientists to try to make out of the cheaper fats a substitute for butter. It was Napoleon III who set the chemist Mege-Mourier at work to dis- cover an artificial butter for use in the army. This chemist added butter color and flavors made in the laboratory, to olein and margarin extracted from beef suet, and mixed with this a little real butter, and so successful was the result, that the making of artifi- cial butter has become a great industry. Now cer- tainly no one objects to artificial butter on the ground that it is made of animal fats, for he eats these every day on his table ; he objects because he has doubts as to the cleanliness or the healthfulness of its method of manufacture.

Therefore since the substitution, to some extent, of animal fats for butter is from an economic stand- point so desirable, if we cannot bring ourselves to use oleomargarine we must do the best we can in these kitchen laboratories of ours to make other fats than butter acceptable to the taste.

Uses of Fats. 71