LETTER ON MEATS

Your lessons about meat will, I hope, be both useful and interest- ing to you.

I want to give you a few hints about cooking it, and afterward you will receive directions about buying it.

There are light and dark meats. The dark must be cooked rare, so that in carving the juice will follow the knife. As a general rule, the light must be cooked thoroughly.

However it is cooked, it must always be prepared In the same way.

Except for soup, the juices must be kept inside the meat.

There is a gummy substance in meat that can be hardened by great heat, and made to form a crust on the outside, shutting in all the juices. It is something like the white of an egg, when hardened by heat it encloses the yolk.

However meat is cooked, this crust must form on the outside. To produce this result, it must be exposed at first to a great heat, but cooked more slowly toward the last.

Meat cooked rapidly will be hard all the way through.

To roast^ your oven should be very hot at first, then slow and steady.

To boil, the water must be boiling at first, then simmer gently.

To fry, the smoke must rise from the centre of the pan, to show it is hot enouofh.

To broil, the fire must be so hot that the outside of your meat is seared at once.

The meats upon which we mostly depend are beef from the ox and cow, mutton and lamb from the sheep, pork from the pig, and veal from the calf.

Ox beef is much nicer than cow beef, and you can know it by the color, which is a dark red, well mingled with fat, of a rich white shade, and a fine grain.

Cow beef is paler, and much firmer.

Lamb is more delicate than mutton. 9

66 LESSOJV FOURTH.

Pork and veal are not considered so healthful as beef or lamb, though both make delicious dishes.

The fat in beef is very valuable in cooking, but the fat of lamb or mutton should not be mingled with other dishes on account of its strong flavor.

From pork we get our best lard, and salt pork is excellent for seasoning other meats, and makes a nice dish fried in thin stripes.

To cook salt meats which have been prepared for winter use, or to be used on long sea voyages, place them in cold water first, to draw out the salt, and then allow them slowly to come to a boil.

Ham is much nicer if the skin is removed before boiling, as it has a strong, smoky taste.

Many of these things you can only learn by experience.

After this lesson, if you give good attention, you will know how to cook any ordinary roast, to broil or fry a steak, or cook a piece of corned beef.

After your chart lesson you will better understand how to buy meat to advantage.

When you have learned all these things, and have seen how much better it is to make proper use of your material, if you try your skill at home, nothing would be more gratifying to me than to know you are profiting by my teaching.