The housekeeper's guide to preserved meats, fruits, vegetables, &c

There are numberless ways of cooking macaroni, and I will as briefly as possible refer to some not so well known in this country as on the Continent, where macaroni is rearded as an article of everyday food, n Italy the most general way of serving macaroni is as follows : — First, take a pound of macaroni, wash it thoroughly, and let it boil in plain water till it is tender ; a little salt should be added to the water. A still better method would be to boil the macaroni in a little greasy stock. The water that has been used for boiling a ham, a piece of pickled pork, or a piece of bacon, etc. , would do very well for the purpose. When the macaroni is tender, drain off the water, and turn the macaroni into a dish. Add to it a good-sized spoonful of tomato sauce or some of the conserve of tomato. A little butter should also be added, and a little grated Parmesan cheese. Parmesan cheese, which is an Italian cheese, is best suited for the purpose ; it can be obtained in bottles. There is no doubt that Parmesan cheese is superior to every other kind of cheese. Francatelli recommends a mixture of Parmesan cheese with an equal quantity of Gruyhre. In English homes housekeepers will find macaroni a very cheap and useful form in which they can use up the remains of all kinds of cheese used for the table. Grated cheese is an extremely economical dish, as well as a very simple one ; because if cheese is not used in this way it will be thrown away. All housekeepers know that there are times when cheese gets into a state in which it is impossible to send it to table as it is. Too often — and I fear it is owing to either ignorance or indifference — the remains of cheese are absolutely wasted. A dish of macaroni served at the commencement of dinner, as I have described, will be found to be an immense saving, as after a good plate of a tempting dish of this description it will be found that very much less meat is eaten. Unlike meat, macaroni increases in weight by cooking, owing to the moisture it absorbs. A leg of mutton, weighing ten pounds uncooked, will weigh considerably less than ten pounds after being roasted or baked. A very great amount of moisture will escape in the form of steam, and a considerable amount of fat leaves the meat of course in the shape of dripping. On the other hand, macaroni which weighed a pound at the grocer’s, after cooking will be found to have very much increased in weight and bulk. I would here remind housekeepers that it can be bought at the rate of sixpence a pound. There is a very general impression that macaroni is an expensive article. It is only wheaten Hour in a very dry state, and consequently very light. When, however, it is soaked and boiled in either stock, water, or milk, the weight increases very materially, and housekeepers will be astonished to find how much can be made out of a pound of macaroni when cooked. Probably one difficulty in the way of the receipt I have just given is the tomato sauce. Unfortunately we all know that in this country housekeepers protest against all kinds of novelties. To buy a bottle of tomato sauce seems to them an unnecessary extravagance. I will therefore give one other method of cooking macaroni, which is not so general or so good as the previous one.