Potato soup, fried fish. Stewing — Irish stew, apple dumplings (baked). Sea pie, baked apples or stewed rhubarb. Poor man’s goose, milk puddings, various shapes of rice, etc., and stewed fruit. Brazilian stew or Exeter stew, ox-cheek or cow-heel, roly-poly pudding. Pastry — Short pastry may be practised until it is known thoroughly, both for meat, meat and potato, and fruit pies. Flaky Pastry — This takes a very long time to teach TEACHING DOMESTIC ECONOMY 69 satisfactorily. In making meat pies, the best way to get a good result is either to use meat which has been previously cooked and allowed to cool, or to put the meat on immediately before the pastry has been mixed, and allow to cook in a saucepan or in hot-pot dishes in the oven. Then let the children make up 4 o z. flour and 3 oz. fat, either in the method employed in making rough puff pastry or in the ordinary way, dividing the fat into two parts and putting it on in small pieces. Let them roll this into a complete round the size of a saucer. Bake on a baking-sheet, as the pastry for oyster patties is cooked. It can be cooked quickly and well in the oven, and there is no fear of its being indigestible, as it is if cooked on the pies. The very small pies that children make dry up so soon when meat has to be cooked in them. Baked Flour may be used for thickening the gravy of stews made from meat which is too cheap to allow of the meat being fried first. Vegetaline or cocoa butter is the vegetarian fat used for pastry or frying. It is far more palatable than lard, and may be obtained at 8d. per pound. Gravy — If it is desired to make gravy quickly for roast meat, it will often be found that if foreign meat has been used very little gravy has oozed out of the meat. If the meat is well roasted, boiling water or seasoned stock may be poured over it, and a very little of the baked flour referred to be stirred in. A few drops of any meat essence will add to the general flavour, but this might be too expensive for 2d. dinners. Every scrap of gravy which comes out of the meat in cooking should be preserved, as there is nothing like 70 INSTRUCTION IN COOKERY this for adding to stock, soup, etc., and it is infinitely preferable to the browning, etc., with which some people over-flavour their gravy. Flour should never be added until the gravy is nearly ready for serving, as the addition of thickening is said to arrest the softening of the fibres of the meat in a stew. CHAPTER VI CHEAP PROTEID FOOD OTHER THAN MEAT IN some neighbourhoods, and with some incomes, it will be quite impossible to provide butcher’s meat every day. What, then, is the best food which can be -taken to supply the need of the body for proteid ? In the recipes given by many of the most rigorous vegetarians great stress is laid on the white powder sold to be sprinkled into food, which is tasteless and expensive, and the last thing which a poor person would buy from choice. But I am not concerned in this chapter in showing methods of cooking dishes for those who are vegetarians from conscience or choice, but with those who are obliged to abstain from butcher’s meat from necessity.

AI-modernized reading of the original text

Potato soup, fried fish. Stewing — Irish stew, apple dumplings (baked). Sea pie, baked apples or stewed rhubarb. Poor man’s goose, milk puddings, various shapes of rice, etc., and stewed fruit. Brazilian stew or Exeter stew, ox-cheek or cow-heel, roly-poly pudding. Pastry — Short pastry may be practised until it is known thoroughly, both for meat, meat and potato, and fruit pies. Flaky Pastry — This takes a very long time to teach satisfactorily. In making meat pies, the best way to get a good result is either to use meat which has been previously cooked and allowed to cool, or to put the meat on immediately before the pastry has been mixed, and allow to cook in a saucepan or in hot-pot dishes in the oven. Then let the children make up 4 o z. flour and 3 oz. fat, either in the method employed in making rough puff pastry or in the ordinary way, dividing the fat into two parts and putting it on in small pieces. Let them roll this into a complete round the size of a saucer. Bake on a baking-sheet, as the pastry for oyster patties is cooked. It can be cooked quickly and well in the oven, and there is no fear of its being indigestible, as it is if cooked on the pies. The very small pies that children make dry up so soon when meat has to be cooked in them. Baked Flour may be used for thickening the gravy of stews made from meat which is too cheap to allow of the meat being fried first. Vegetaline or cocoa butter is the vegetarian fat used for pastry or frying. It is far more palatable than lard, and may be obtained at 8d. per pound. Gravy — If it is desired to make gravy quickly for roast meat, it will often be found that if foreign meat has been used very little gravy has oozed out of the meat. If the meat is well roasted, boiling water or seasoned stock may be poured over it, and a very little of the baked flour referred to be stirred in. A few drops of any meat essence will add to the general flavour, but this might be too expensive for 2d. dinners. Every scrap of gravy which comes out of the meat in cooking should be preserved, as there is nothing like this for adding to stock, soup, etc., and it is infinitely preferable to the browning, etc., with which some people over-flavour their gravy. Flour should never be added until the gravy is nearly ready for serving, as the addition of thickening is said to arrest the softening of the fibres of the meat in a stew. CHAPTER VI CHEAP PROTEID FOOD OTHER THAN MEAT IN some neighbourhoods, and with some incomes, it will be quite impossible to provide butcher’s meat every day. What, then, is the best food which can be -taken to supply the need of the body for proteid ? In the recipes given by many of the most rigorous vegetarians great stress is laid on the white powder sold to be sprinkled into food, which is tasteless and expensive, and the last thing which a poor person would buy from choice. But I am not concerned in this chapter in showing methods of cooking dishes for those who are vegetarians from conscience or choice, but with those who are obliged to abstain from butcher’s meat from necessity.

Instruction in cookery (Methuen's text-books, Thompson)