Chapter III: Part 3

Now take your recipe for bread making. Use the compressed yeast which you buy at the grocery store. For two small loaves of bread or a large pan of biscuit use a whole cake of yeast. Dissolve the yeast in lukewarm water, a cupful of lukewarm water. Then add enough flour to form a thick batter; that will be about a cupful of flour; a thick batter which will cling to the mixing spoon when you lift the spoon and let a drop fall on the surface. Cover the bowl with a towel folded several times, or a thick cloth, so that all the heat can be retained. Then set the bowl somewhere near the fire, in a place not too hot to bear your hand, and let it stand for about half an hour, or until the batter is light and foamy. Keep the bowl covered all the time, and take care that you do not have it in too hot a place. Don't have it in a place where you can not bear your hand. After the sponge--as the batter is called--is light and foaming, mix in another cupful of lukewarm water in which a teaspoonful of salt is dissolved. After the second cupful of lukewarm water with the teaspoonful of salt dissolved in it, add enough flour to form a dough stiff enough to knead with the hands. Knead the dough on the board for just five minutes. Some good housekeepers would declare that just five minutes' kneading is flying in the face of Providence in the way of bread making, but I assure you it is enough. That is, it is enough to give you bread of a firm, fine grain, perfectly even in its consistency. It won't be full of large, uneven holes; it will be firm, fine bread. After you have kneaded the bread five minutes make it up in a little loaf, or two loaves, as you like; put them in small iron pans, buttered--black iron bread pans--and set them again by the fire, where you can bear your hand, and let the little loaves of dough rise until they are just twice as large as when you put them down. That generally will take about half an hour if the yeast is good. Brush the loaves over the top with a little melted butter, or with a teaspoonful of sugar dissolved in water. Put them in the oven and bake them. The bread is to be baked until you can run a sharp knife or trussing needle in through the thickest part of the loaf without the bread sticking in any way. If the needle or knife comes out clean and bright the bread is done. It may take from half an hour to an hour to bake the bread. In the stove that I used the first morning over in the other building I have baked a loaf of bread, the size of those I am going to show you, in eleven minutes. I had not realized that bread could be baked thoroughly in so short a time, but one day in Northampton, Mass., one of my class timed the baking of the bread. A loaf of bread of that size was baked in eleven minutes. This same bread dough you can make up in the form of little rolls. I will make part of it up in rolls. Of course you will understand that the smaller the piece of dough the more rapidly it will rise the second time, and the quicker you will be enabled to bake it. So if you are in a hurry, and want bread baked quickly, you will make it in the form of little rolls; when I make the rolls I will describe the process.

_Question._ Should bread be baked a long or a short time?

MISS CORSON. The sooner it can be baked the better. There is no special object to be gained in the baking of bread except to thoroughly cook the dough. It can not affect the nutriment of the flour very much whether it takes a longer or a shorter time. The nutriment of the flour might be slightly wasted if it took a very long time. There is no objection to baking bread as quickly as it can be done.

Now before I begin to make the pudding I will answer a question that has been asked about the best yeast and the quick rising of bread. The object of raising bread is simply to make it digestible by separating the mass of the dough. If it is firm and solid, that is, if the bread is heavy, it can not be easily penetrated by the gastric juice, and consequently is indigestible. So that the most healthy bread is that which is sufficiently light and porous to allow the gastric juice to penetrate it easily. Only a mechanical operation is required to make the bread light. Now that process which will most quickly make the bread dough light is the most desirable. The longer you take to raise bread, the more slowly you raise, the more of the nutriment of the flour you destroy by the process of fermentation that lightens the bread. The yeast combining with water at a certain temperature causes fermentation, and from that fermentation carbolic acid gas is evolved, which forces its way up through the dough and fills it with little bubbles,--in other words, makes it light. Now the more quickly you can accomplish that fermentation, or rather lightening of the dough by the formation of little air cells, the more you will preserve the nutriment of the flour.

The idea prevails to some extent that if ladies use as much yeast as I have to-day the bread will taste of the yeast. It will not if the yeast is fresh. If the yeast is old or sour it will taste. But you can use as much as I have shown you and not have the bread taste after it is done. You see my object in using a great deal of yeast, proportionately, is to accomplish the lightening of the dough in a very short time. The best bread that ever was made or that ever was put on the market was raised mechanically, without the action of yeast; it was called aerated bread. It was bread dough lightened by a mechanical process. Carbonic acid gas was driven into the dough by machinery after the flour was mixed with salt water; and the bread made was very light and every particle of the nourishment preserved in that way.

_Question._ Do you ever put sugar in bread?

MISS CORSON. You can put in anything you like. You can put sugar, or milk, or anything you like in the bread to vary it. I will use nothing to-day but yeast, flour, water, and salt. This is perfectly plain, wholesome bread. You put milk in bread and it makes it dry quicker. Vienna bread, which is made partly of milk, dries more quickly than any other bread that is made. You can make any variation you like from the recipe I have given you. I have given you a perfectly plain home-made bread.

_Question._ Do you ever scald the flour for bread?

MISS CORSON. You can scald the flour if you wish, but you do not accomplish any special purpose by it. In the winter time, if you heat the flour before you mix it with yeast and warm water, you increase the rapidity with which the bread dough rises.

_Question._ How would you make brown bread--ordinary graham bread?

MISS CORSON. Use graham flour; mix your white flour with it, if it is for graham bread proper; if it is for graham gems use simply graham flour, water and salt, beaten together. Graham flour, salt and water beaten together into a form and baked in little buttered tins is the graham bread pure and simple of the Grahamites. It is not necessary to knead bread more than once to secure lightness. I have already said that the longer you prolong the process of bread making the more of the nourishment of the flour you destroy. You will see when the bread is baked to-day, if we are fortunate in our baking, that the bread is perfectly light and of even grain.

BREAD AND APPLE PUDDING.

Stale bread cut in slices or small pieces, fill a pudding dish of medium size, only three eggs, or if eggs are very dear, four tablespoonfuls of sugar, and a pint of milk, or enough more milk to saturate the bread. If the bread is very stale and dry you will have to use a pint and a half of milk. Three eggs, a pint of milk, four tablespoons of sugar, will make about a quart of liquid. The custard you pour over the bread; let the custard soak into the bread; then on the top of the pudding put a layer of fruit about an inch thick. You may vary the fruit, using sliced apples, or dried apples which have been soaked over night, and then stewed tender, dried peaches treated in the same way, or canned peaches, canned pears--any fruit you like. In the summer, in berry season, use berries. If the fruit is sour sprinkle it with sugar; then put the pudding in the oven and bake it. You can use dried fruit with this pudding, such as raisins or currants, but you put the fruit in through the pudding instead of on top. If you want to make the pudding particularly good you will separate the white and yolks of the eggs, mix the yolks of the eggs with the milk and sugar; save the whites until the pudding is done; in that case you have to use a little more milk proportionately. Save the whites until the pudding is done, then beat them to a stiff froth and add to it three heaping tablespoons of powdered sugar, very gently mixing them, just as I mixed that light omelette yesterday. That makes what is called a _meringue_. Put the _meringue_ over the top of the pudding after it is done; run it through the oven for about a minute, just long enough to color it slightly, and then serve the pudding.

If you want the pudding entirely smooth when it is done, you must break the bread up in the custard before you bake it. My way is simply to saturate the bread with the custard. You can beat it if you wish. The pudding will be slightly liquid, like bread pudding, and then the fruit, if it is juicy, makes it still more liquid, and if you add the _meringue_, that of itself is a sauce. You will notice, as a rule, that I make everything as plain as possible, because I wish to demonstrate that plain dishes cooked with simple and few materials, can be very good. Perforated tin pie plates bake very nicely. Of course you want to take care to have the bottom crust thick enough, so that none of the juice from fruit pies will run through. If the oven is very hot on the bottom, it will not do to set a pie on the very bottom; a grating must be used. You will have to use your judgment about baking, watching the pie, and taking care that it does not get burnt.

(Returning to the bread making, Miss Corson continued:)

Now I am going to put the second cup of water and flour into the dough. You want to remember, in raising bread, to keep it always at the same temperature until you get it light. It should be set where you can put your hand without burning. Keep the bowl, containing the sponge, just warm. You don't want it anywhere where it will get so hot as to scald the sponge. You can set the bowl in winter over boiling water to keep the temperature equal.

(A question was asked in regard to rhubarb pie.)

MISS CORSON. Some ladies put the rhubarb raw into the pies when they make rhubarb pies, trusting to its cooking while the crust is baking; others stew it with sugar before they put it in the pies. When it comes in from the market it should be cut in little pieces about half an inch long, and the outside, or thin skin, stripped off. It requires a great deal of sugar, whether you put it into the pie uncooked, or you first cook it. It makes an exceedingly nice acid pie. Usually the best way is to stew it first before you put it in the pie. That gives it to you in the form of a pulp. If you put it raw into the pie, to a certain extent the form is perfect, that is, it retains its little block-like shape after it is cooked.

(The bread now being ready to knead, Miss Corson recurred to that subject.)

I will take for the dough three cups of flour, about three heaping cupfuls besides the first one. There was an old adage to the effect that some imaginary substance called "elbow grease" was necessary in kneading bread. I presume that is another name for force. But there is no special strength necessary. The bread is kneaded for the purpose of entangling a little more air in it, and you accomplish that by folding and refolding it, as I am doing; just using enough flour to keep it from sticking to your hands. In five minutes you will find that you have a rather smooth, soft dough, that does not stick to your hands. That is all you want. You will always find perfectly good yeast in any town, or you can make the yeast yourself.

_Question._ If you use twice as much flour would you use twice as much yeast?

MISS CORSON. If you want to raise the bread quickly you can increase the quantity of yeast in the same proportion that I have given it you here to-day, until you reach as much as six or seven pounds of flour, and then you would not need to use proportionately as much yeast. You could diminish the quantity a little. You see, the object of using plenty of yeast is to get the bread raised quickly.

_Question._ Doesn't home-made yeast make heartier bread than the other?

MISS CORSON. It makes bread less digestible--it may be heartier in that sense; the Irishman does not like his potatoes quite done; he thinks them heartier when they are somewhat indigestible. There could not be more nutritious or wholesome bread than this quickly raised bread. I have given you several very good reasons for raising bread as quickly as possible. Bread raised more slowly is not so nutritious, because some of the nutritive elements are destroyed in the fermentation which goes on in the slow process.

To make rolls, take small pieces of dough and make them round, and cut them nearly through the centre. Put the rolls in a buttered pan; cover them up with a cloth and let them rise double their original size, where you can bear your hand. Then bake them. Let the dough always rise until it is twice its size before baking. I think I have already explained to you that if you want the bread or roll glossy you can brush it with sugar and water, or melted butter. These rolls will be set on the top of the stove to rise, just like bread. As soon as they are twice their size they go into the oven to bake.

_Question._ Do you ever use any shortening in the rolls?

MISS CORSON. You can use it if you want to. Knead butter in the part of the dough that is designed for rolls--say a tablespoonful of butter; put it in when you are doing the five minutes' kneading. There is no reason why you should not knead in anything that your fancy calls for, providing it is edible.

Now I will show you how you can prevent the juice running out of fruit pies. For fruit pies--pies made in the summer time, of juicy fruits--better use no under crust. Take a deep dish; put the fruit into the dish, heaping it a little, just as I heaped the apples; wet the edges of the dish with cold water; lay the pastry on the dish and press it very slightly, _not on the edge itself_, because that makes the pastry heavy, but just inside of the edge. As I press it I leave the edge intact; press the pastry against the dish all the way round; then with your finger make a little groove all the way round your pie, inside the edge of the crust; then, with a little knife, cut holes in the groove. Now, when the juice of the fruit boils out, as it will, instead of forcing its way out of the edges, the crust will be held upon the wet dish, and the fruit juice will boil out in the little groove and stay there. To serve the pie, you cut the upper crust with a sharp knife, and serve with a spoon, taking a piece of crust and plenty of fruit out on each plate. No under crust is there. If you have an under crust with very juicy pie it will be pretty sure to be soggy and heavy. The English way of serving these pies is a very nice one, and is, as I have described, with whipped cream. Serve whipped cream with a fruit pie. Among other nice things that we can not get in this country is Devonshire cream, which is a cream almost as thick as the hard sauce you make by mixing powdered sugar and egg together; it is thick enough almost to cut. We can not get that cream here, but use thick, nice cream, sweetened or not, as you like. One of my English friends, who first taught me this way of serving pie, said that at her home they never sweetened the cream; they simply whipped it to a froth and served it piled up on a dish by the side of the pie. The pie was taken out on a plate, and then two or three spoonfuls of this whipped cream laid on the plate by the side of the pie. You can sweeten it if you like.

MERINGUE.

I will next make a _meringue_. I have already told you to use the whites of three eggs, three tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar--and that really must be pulverized very fine and sifted. In beating the eggs you can always get them light very quickly, if they are reasonably cold in the beginning, by beating with a change of movement. Beat until your hand grows tired, and then simply change the way you hold the beater. Don't stop beating. Of course you can use any kind of an egg-whip you like. This which I use is made of twisted wire. Only take care to have the egg beaten entirely stiff. Do not have any liquid egg in the bottom of the bowl. In the summer time you can cool the egg by putting in a little pinch of salt if it does not beat stiff at once. I would not advise using an egg that had the least odor about it. As soon as the custard in the pudding is done we are going to take the pudding out of the oven, and put the _meringue_ on the top, whether the apples are done or not. It does not do any harm to stop beating for awhile. Mix this, using a cutting motion, not a stirring motion. Mix until the sugar and egg are smoothly blended, and the _meringue_ is ready to use.

LECTURE FIFTH.

Our lesson this morning is cream of salmon; shoulder of lamb, boned and roasted; force meat or stuffing for roast meats; potatoes, boiled and baked; and cheese crusts. I shall begin with the lamb or mutton.

Remove the bone first, then stuff and bake the meat, as I have no facilities for roasting with this stove; but I will have something to say about the process of roasting in the course of the lesson. A great many of the ladies think that the shoulder or fore quarters of meat is not so desirable a piece for use as the loin or hind quarter, but that is a mistake. In the first place the proportion of bone in the fore quarter is very much less than in the hind quarter. In one lesson that I gave, about a week ago, at Cleveland, I had a butcher remove all the bones from a fore quarter weighing between five and six pounds, and then weighed the bones: They weighed a pound and a quarter. I also had him remove the bones from the hind quarters and weighed them, and they weighed more. The meat of the fore quarter is sweeter, and quite as nutritious as the meat of the hind quarter, and the fore quarter is always cheaper. So that, you see, on the score of flavor and economy, the fore quarter is more desirable for use than the hind quarter. In England, where mutton is always in perfection, it is the fore quarter or shoulder of mutton that is served to guests, and the hind quarter is the one that is used for the family dinner.

To make the dish which I am going to prepare this morning, I have had the whole quarter brought in so that I can show you how the shoulder should be cut off. Simply with a large piece of the outside skin attached. Usually the butcher might cut the shoulder square off close, but I want this large piece of skin for stuffing. There is a natural division between the shoulder and the ribs, so that the shoulder comes off with perfect ease. If you buy an entire fore quarter like that you will have the butcher cut off the shoulder for roasting or baking, then let him cut the neck in rather small pieces for stews or mutton broth. What is called the rack or ribs would be cut into chops for broiling or frying, and the breast would be cut off entire to be stewed or roasted or baked. A very nice way to prepare the breast is to have the bones all taken out, spread a layer of nice force meat or stuffing over it, roll it up, and tie it. Then it can be baked, or roasted, or stewed. Another nice way to cook the breast is to boil it until it is tender enough to enable you to pull the bones out without any difficulty; then take out all the bones, put it on a platter, set another platter on top of it with a heavy weight on the top platter, and press it until it is cold. Then cut it in rather small pieces, about two or three inches square, and bread and fry it. The process of breading and frying is accomplished in this way. You have cracker crumbs--cracker crumbs rolled and sifted--or bread crumbs, stale bread, dried in the oven and rolled and sifted, in a large dish. In another dish beat a couple of eggs until they are liquid. It does not need to be frothy, but simply to have the substance of the egg well broken; then dip the little pieces of boiled lamb, first in the cracker dust, then in the beaten egg, then again in the cracker dust. That is called breading. To fry properly, so that you have no grease, you want the frying kettle half full of fat. You don't want a little fat in a frying pan, but a frying kettle like that which you use in frying doughnuts. Put the kettle over the fire and let the fat get hot, that is, let it get so hot that it begins to smoke. When the fat begins to smoke you plunge whatever article you wish to fry into it. If you take the precaution to do that, have plenty of fat and let it get smoking hot and then fry in it, you will never have anything greasy. The action of the hot fat at once so carbonizes the surface of what you wish to fry, and prevents the soaking of the fat. Fry whatever article you are treating until it is a light brown, then take it out of the fat with a skimmer, and lay it on brown paper for a moment--coarse brown paper--and that will absorb the very little fat on the surface. It will be perfectly free from grease. You can season before you bread an article, or you can season the bread crumbs or cracker dust which you use in breading, just as you like. Or, after the article is fried you can season it with salt and pepper. Some things are seasoned after the frying--for instance, Saratoga potatoes--they are always salted after frying. You can make bread crumbs very fine by using a fine sieve and sifting. If you have cracker meal already prepared you will see that it is as fine as Indian meal; it is sold in the grocery stores and at the cracker factories, and it is cheaper to buy cracker dust or cracker meal than it is to make it at home, if you buy the whole crackers, because, of course the manufacturers can afford to use their broken crackers--they are all perfectly good--in making cracker meal and sell that very much cheaper than they can sell the whole crackers. The question of the digestibility of fried articles of food is very often raised. You understand that the hard fried surface is less digestible than any soft surface, and many fried articles are indigestible because of the quantity of grease they contain. If you fry in the way I have told you, you will not have that excess of grease.

To take the bone from the shoulder, first cut from the inside and take out the shoulder blade, cutting from the inside, avoiding as far as possible cutting through the skin on the outside. The butcher will always do this for you probably, if you tell him about what you want done. First, the shoulder blade is taken out, then the bone which follows down along the leg. After the shoulder blade is taken out put it into a kettle of water, over the fire, and boil it for awhile until you can scrape all the meat off of it. You will have to use it in finishing the dish. After taking out the shoulder blade the cutting must all be done from the inside. There will be two or three places where you may possibly cut through the skin, where it is drawn very close over the bone, but cut as little as possible. When the meat is freshly killed before the skin is dried, you may not always cut through there, but where the skin is dried fast to the bone you will have to. This may seem a slight waste of time, but this dish is desirable for several reasons. In the first place, the bone being entirely taken out you can carve it without any waste whatever and with a great deal of ease. In the next place it gives you a very ornamental dish. In fact, I am going to show you how to make a duck out of it. And as I say, if you get the butcher to do it, it will not make any difference to you if it does take time.

Always in sewing meat or poultry, ladies, take very large stitches, not with fine thread. Use cord, so that you can see where the threads are when the meat is done. Any kind of a large needle will answer for sewing, large enough to carry your cord. Always leave long ends too.

To stuff the meat, season it nicely with pepper and salt and any herb that you are going to use in making stuffing. Sage, of course, would be very good with fat meat; put onion in the stuffing to make it imitate duck. For a force meat of bread, a teaspoonful of chopped onion; fry it in a tablespoonful of butter until it is light brown. While the onion is frying soak a cupful of stale bread in cold water until it is soft, then squeeze out the water. Put the soaked bread with the fried onion, add a teaspoonful of salt, a teaspoonful of any herb that you decide for seasoning, any dried sweet herb, half a saltspoonful of pepper, and stir all these ingredients over the fire until they are scalding hot. Use that force meat for stuffing any kind of meat or poultry. Of course there are a great many ways of making force meats; this is only one, and a very simple one. Another good stuffing for duck or for this dish, if you wish it more closely to imitate duck, would be to increase the quantity of onion--use much more onion, half a cupful of onion, or even more when you want to make onion stuffing. Another way is to use dry bread without cooking, a chopped onion, herbs, butter; some ladies like to put an egg in stuffing. There are a great many different methods of making it. Cold, chopped meat is very nice added to stuffing or dressing.

After the shoulder is stuffed thus, run a needle entirely round the edge in a large, over-hand stitch, so that you can draw it up like a purse; stitches at least an inch and a half long. That draws the edge up. Then take two or three stitches in such a way as to hold the stuffing in. Remember always to leave long ends in tying the cord used in sewing. Then curl the leg up like the neck of a duck and fasten with a cord. After it is prepared like that it is to be put into a pan in the oven, or before a hot fire, and browned quickly on the outside. It may be seasoned after it is browned. There will be a little drippings in the pan; baste it with the drippings; bake it or roast it, allowing, if you want it well done, about twenty minutes to the pound. A shoulder like that will weigh about two pounds and a half or three pounds. It will do in an hour's time in a pretty quick oven; in an hour and a half in a moderate one. Use no water in the baking pan, because water never can get as hot as the fat outside of the meat. The temperature of the hot fat is higher than the temperature of hot water, and the result of putting water around meat in a baking pan is to draw out the juice. The object is to keep all the juice in the meat. You will always find that there will be drippings enough from any ordinary cut of meat for the purpose of basting. If you have an absolutely lean piece of meat pour about a couple of tablespoonfuls of drippings, or butter, in the baking pan, but no water, and use the drippings for basting. A nice gravy is very easily made from the drippings in the pan. I will tell you about that later. If the meat appears to be baking too quickly, if there is any danger of its burning, put a sheet of buttered paper over it. Baste the meat every fifteen or twenty minutes. You can drench it with flour, just before basting, if you want to. That gives it a rough surface. The flour browns with the fat. If you are basting with water of course the flour would not brown so quickly. I think I have given you good reasons for not basting it with water.

CREAM OF SALMON.

A cupful of boiled salmon separated from the skin and bone and rubbed through a sieve with a potato masher, mixed with a quart of cream soup, gives you cream of salmon. Any of the ladies who have seen cream sauce made will understand the making of the cream soup. Put a slice of salmon that will make a cupful, over the fire in enough boiling water to cover it, with a heaping tablespoonful of salt, and boil it until the flakes separate. That will be perhaps ten minutes. Watch it a little. When the flakes separate drain it, take away the skin and bones and put it into a fine colander or stout wire sieve, and rub it through with a potato masher.

_Question._ Do you use canned salmon?

MISS CORSON. Yes, you can use canned salmon. That is already cooked, and you simply would rub it through the sieve. The fresh salmon is to be boiled in salted water. If you use canned salmon you do not need to boil it. After the salmon is rubbed through the sieve it is called _puree_ or pulp of salmon.

Now to make a quart of cream soup: For each quart of soup put in the sauce pan a heaping tablespoonful of butter, a heaping tablespoonful of flour; put them over the fire and stir them until they are quite smooth. Then begin to add hot milk, half a cupful at a time, stirring each half cupful smoothly with the butter and flour before you add any more, till you have added a quart, or if milk is scarce a pint of milk and a pint of water. If you haven't any milk at all, a quart of water. That gives you a white soup, if you add simply water; if you add milk it is called cream soup. If you are very fortunate and have lots of cream, in place of some of the milk, use cream, and then you will have genuine cream soup. After the milk or water is all added, then season the soup palatably with salt and pepper--white pepper. I have told you about white pepper. It is to be had at all the grocery stores; it costs no more than black pepper and is very much nicer for any white soup or white sauce. Salt and pepper to taste, and a very little grated nutmeg; a quarter of a saltspoonful, a little pinch of grated nutmeg. After the soup is seasoned stir in the salmon. I have told you already how to prepare the salmon. Stir the soup constantly until it boils for a couple of minutes. By that time you will find that the salmon is stirred smoothly all through it. Then it will be ready to serve, and it is very good. You can use any other kind of fish in the same way, and your soup will take its name from the fish that you use. Halibut or codfish, trout or any fish. Only remember if you want the soup to be white you must use the white part of the fish. For instance, if you had a large dark fish you would want to take off the brown parts and use only the white parts. Otherwise the brown parts of the fish will color the soup. You can use cream soup as the basis for vegetable soups that are very nice. Prepare the vegetables in the same way; boil them, and rub them through a sieve with a potato masher. Then stir them into the cream soup. Use asparagus, celery, cucumbers, green peas, string beans, Jerusalem artichokes,--those little root artichokes,--any vegetable, in fact, varying the quantity of vegetable in this way. You will find that some vegetables will give a much more decided flavor than others. For instance, celery has a very strong flavor, and cucumbers have rather a decided flavor. You want to use enough vegetables to flavor the soup, if it is a white vegetable. If it is a vegetable that has a decided color like carrots, for instance, or beets,--by the way, beets make a delicious soup, and a very pretty one is made with spinach,--you want to use enough to color the soup. The beets, boiled so that all the color is preserved, and then rubbed through a sieve, make a very pretty soup. One of our New York pupils calls it a "pink velvet soup." Spinach makes a very nice green soup if it is properly boiled. We shall try to get some spinach for one of the lessons. We have _puree_ of spinach on our list, and if we can get any spinach I will show you how to boil it so as to keep its color.

BOILED POTATOES.

The boiling of potatoes is a very simple operation, but there is a good deal of talking to be done in connection with it. It does not make any difference whether you use hot water or cold in boiling potatoes. What you want to watch is the stage at which you take the potatoes out of the water. That is what determines whether they are to be mealy or not. The cause of the potatoes being mealy is the rupture of the starch cells and the escape of the steam just at the right moment, just when the potatoes are tender; and if you leave them in the water after they are tender, then the membrane of the starch cells being broken permits the water to penetrate; even if the skins are not cut or broken, the moisture in the starch cells themselves will condense and make the potato heavy, so that you want to give the steam a chance to escape as soon as the potatoes are tender. If you will do that you are sure of mealy potatoes, provided the potatoes are ripe. Unripe potatoes, or new potatoes, or sprouted or frosted potatoes, you cannot well make mealy, because the starch cells in the new potatoes are not fully matured, in the old sprouted potatoes they are disorganized, especially as the little sprouts take up the nutritive properties which enable them to grow. But if you use ripe potatoes, before they are beginning to sprout, and pour the water off of them when they are tender and allow the steam to escape, you will be sure to have the potatoes mealy, unless they are watery potatoes; the ordinary market potatoes will be sure to be mealy. Now you can insure the escape of the steam by draining the potatoes and covering them with a towel folded several times; that is, draining off all the water as soon as the potatoes are tender enough to enable you to run a fork through them. Do not wait until they begin to break apart, because by that time the starch cells are being broken up, and the water will have begun to penetrate to the interior of the potato.

After boiling the potatoes, either in cold or hot water, until they are tender, drain them and put a folded towel over them in the sauce pan. Set the sauce pan on the back part of the stove where the potatoes can not burn, or put it up on a brick on the back part of the stove. The potatoes may be peeled or not, as you choose; if you peel the potatoes in the most careful way, that is, cutting the thinnest possible skin off, you will waste at least an ounce in every pound. A very good way to peel potatoes is to take off just a little rim of the skin all around them and boil them; then if you want to peel them before they go to the table, it will be easy to strip off the two pieces of skin remaining. In order to save time I shall put the potatoes into boiling water enough to cover them, with a tablespoonful of salt. Take about a quart of water and a tablespoonful of salt. I have already said that as soon as the potatoes are tender enough to pierce with a fork, not when they are beginning to break, and they are drained, cover them with a cloth and keep them hot as long as you like. In about three or four minutes after they have been covered with the cloth they will begin to grow mealy, as the steam escapes; and you can keep them hot and mealy for three or four hours. It makes very little difference with potatoes, although with some kinds of vegetables it makes a decided difference, whether you boil them in hard or soft water. But as a rule soft water is best for boiling vegetables. You can always soften the water by putting a very little carbonate of soda in it, to counteract the extreme hardness of the water, which is caused by lime or mineral elements. The hardness of water slightly hardens the surface of vegetables, but it has an entirely different action on meats. It slightly hardens the surface--not enough to make the vegetable tough, by any means, but enough to retain all the juices and all the flavors. Do not have the potatoes tightly covered after they are cooked, because the steam will condense on the inside of the cover and fall back on the potatoes, thus making them watery. In serving potatoes on the table after they are cooked, do not put a cover on the dish; put a folded napkin over the potatoes. Do not put the dish cover on--it will have the same effect that it would have if you put the cover on the pot. The steam arising would condense, and fall back on the potatoes in the form of moisture, and make the potatoes watery.

In baking potatoes, the same general principles apply. That is, at the moment when the potatoes are tender--and that of course depends upon the oven in which you bake them--the starch cells are ruptured and the moisture is at the point of escaping if you give it vent by slightly breaking the potato, then the potatoes will keep mealy for a little while. But baked potatoes deteriorate every moment they stand after they are tender. You should serve baked potatoes just the moment they are done, if you want them to be perfect. If you wrap them up in a napkin it keeps in the steam. The longer they stand, the more of the hard skin forms on them, and if you let them stand for half an hour or more you find the skin sometimes a sixteenth of an inch thick. You can take a little slice off the end without breaking them, to permit the escape of the steam. But serve them just as quick as you can. In sending them to the table do not put the dish cover on them. Throw a napkin over them to keep the heat in. I have found that in baking potatoes that the hotter the oven the better the potatoes would be; that is, the more quickly they would be baked. I have been able to bake them sometimes in twenty minutes.

To soak potatoes in cold water restores a little of their moisture that may have been lost by the natural evaporation. For instance, late in the winter you will find potatoes slightly shriveled. That is caused by the escape of the moisture. If you had weighed them in the fall, and weighed them again at that time you would find they weighed less. To soak them for an hour or more before you cook them is to restore that wasted water and to increase the substance of the potato. There is very little nutriment lost in the waste of the moisture; it is only the bulk of the potato. You do not need to salt the water in which the potatoes are soaked. The only effect of salting water would be to make it colder. In soaking green vegetables it is well to salt the water, because if there are any insects in the vegetables they are killed by the action of the salt. In lettuce, or cabbage, or cauliflower, there are insects that hide away among the leaves, and salt kills them. In regard to the soaking of the green vegetables, of course, directly the insects are dead they naturally fall of their own weight from among the leaves. But if the leaves are closely packed, as sometimes they are in cabbage or lettuce; you want to hold the vegetable by the root and turn it up and with your hands separate the leaves without tearing; if lettuce is used, take care not to tear them; if cauliflower is being washed, take hold of the root and shake it well through the water, so that the motion will dislodge the little creatures.

CHEESE CRUSTS.

For cheese crusts use bread that is a day or two old, baker's bread or home-made bread; baker's bread is the best for toast of all kinds, and this is a sort of toast. Cut the bread in even slices, rather small, cutting off the crusts. There is no waste in doing that, for I have already told you how to use up pieces of stale bread by making them into crumbs. Grate some cheese so that you have a tablespoonful of cheese for each little slice of bread. On each of the little pieces of bread put a tablespoonful of the grated cheese, a very little dust of pepper and salt and a small piece of butter not larger than a white dried bean. Put the pieces of bread in a pan, set the pan in a rather quick oven, and just brown the cheese crusts. If the oven is in a good condition it will toast the bread and brown the cheese in about ten minutes, or even less; they are very good, those little cheese crusts. You can use them either hot or cold. They are a very nice supper dish. They are very good with salad at dinner, with any green salad. Of course, if you serve them hot the cheese is a little more tender. Any kind of cheese will answer for making the crusts. I think that the ordinary American factory cheese is about as good as any other cheese. You do not want a rich expensive cheese for cheese crusts.

(At this point the stuffed shoulder of mutton was brought forth, done, the fan-shaped shoulder blade being stuck in to represent the tail of the duck, which the whole dish strongly resembled.)

GRAVY FOR MEAT.

There are about two tablespoonfuls of drippings in the pan. I am going to put a heaping tablespoonful of flour with it and stir until it is brown; then I am going to stir in gradually about a pint of boiling water, and season it with salt and pepper, and then I will send it down and show it to you. Make gravy in this way for any baked meat.

LECTURE SIXTH.

Our first dish this afternoon, ladies, will be roast chicken. The lesson will include fish and poultry. First, to choose a tender chicken, examine the tip end of the breastbone--the lower end of the breast bone, to see if it is soft; if it bends without breaking under pressure; in other words, if the cartilage has not hardened into bone, you may be sure that the chicken is young, and consequently probably tender. The market people have a favorite way of showing you that the chicken is tender by taking hold of the wing and giving the joint a twist. They say, "You see how tender it is!" But that is no test except of strength. But there is no ingenuity which can simulate that soft cartilage on the end of the breast bone. That is always a sure test. After choosing the chicken--of course now I am speaking of dressed chicken, or chickens that are killed--after choosing the chicken, have it carefully picked and singed; then, if it is undrawn, wipe it with a wet towel, and proceed to draw it carefully without breaking the intestines. If it is drawn already the chances are that it will be imperfectly drawn and you will have to wash it. There is the disadvantage of having poultry drawn before it goes to the market, because where people draw poultry in large quantities they are very apt to do it carelessly. In that case it is necessary to wash it, but if you draw it carefully yourself you will not have to do that. By washing, you of course take away the flavor, as I told you the other day, because you lose more or less of the blood.

Cut the skin of the back of the neck and take out the crop, then out off the neck close to the body, that leaves the skin so that you can draw it up and fasten it back. If this chicken was not already cut for drawing I should cut it at one side under one of the legs, so that when I came to sew it up and dress it I could hide the cut. This chicken has been drawn carefully and does not seem to need washing. The liver and gizzard have been laid back inside. The entrails are all taken away. You can always tell by looking at the chicken whether the entrails are broken and whether it needs washing. After you have drawn the chicken very carefully separate the gall from the liver. The gall is that little greenish bag that lies on one side of the liver; and you want to cut it off without breaking, because if you break it it will make bitter everything that it touches. Save whatever fat there is about the entrails, and put it in the baking pan with the chicken. The gizzard has been cut open from one side and the inside bag which contains gravel and straw taken out. But a very much easier way to dress the gizzard instead of opening it, is to cut away the bluish skin which lies on the outside, on both sides, without opening the gizzard at all, and cut out that piece of flesh. That is the only valuable portion of the gizzard; if you dress the gizzard in this way when it is not already opened you save yourself a great deal of trouble, for it is a very hard matter to open a gizzard like that and take away the bag which contains the gravel, especially if the poultry has been frozen, as the bag is apt to break and let out the gravel. Use the gizzard and liver for making gravy, and the neck also. Cut out the oil sac or bag which lies at the back of the tail. Then the chicken is ready for stuffing. In cutting off the feet cut them below the joint, not just at the joint. If you cut them just at the joint the skin and flesh will draw up in cooking. But if you cut them just below the joint you will find that they do not draw up. After cutting off the feet scrape the skin all round to make sure that there are no bits of feather or anything of that sort, and wipe it with a wet towel and you have the chicken in readiness to stuff.