The paper-bag cookery manual

The system of paper-bag cookery may be adopted with advantage in the case of small joints, chickens (whole or cut up into the usual joints), small birds, pigeons and other meat stews, ragouts, etc., various kinds of fish, notably cod, salmon, turbot, and halibut (cut in slices), sole, whiting, mullet, mackerel, herrings, haddock, etc., all kinds of game, partridge, grouse, etc., certain vegetables, such as potatoes, mushrooms, tomatoes, broad beans, vegetable marrow, etc., also cakes and pastry, milk puddings, meat and fruit pies. When cooking milk puddings in paperbags the pudding must be made in the ordinary way in a shallow pie-dish. This is then slipped in a paper-bag, carefully folded at the end and fastened with clips, and then placed on a grid in the oven. NOTE. — The times given for cooking are only approximate as so much depends on the heat at which the oven is uniformly maintained. Successful results must of course be a matter of experience. Flavour. Conservation of flavour is a special claim of paper-bag cookery. This is a point which has hitherto been grossly neglected by the majority of English cooks. Not only have we failed to practise sufficiently slow-cooking methods, such as steaming, stewing, braising, etc., in which our Continental neighbours have always excelled themselves, and to which the success of the foreign cuisines is so largely owing, but we have committed even worse blunders, so that English cookery has at times become the laughing-stock of the nations. Our joints have been subjected to prolonged, scorching heat, or else sodden in flavourless water. Our fruit and vegetables, after undergoing surgical treatment of the severest kind, by means of which a large portion of their valuable salts and acids were lost irremediably, have been plunged, according to the same clumsy methods, into oceans of fast boiling water, and galloped mercilessly to their doom. Small wonder is it that “tough” and “tasteless” are the only adjectives which foreigners know to apply to English cookery. But paper-bag cookery, from its very nature, has achieved an entire reformation in this direction, and has probably done more than centuries of criticism to wipe out our national reproach as regards lack of flavour. Chefs, from time immemorial, have adopted protective measures to ensure the utmost piquancy to their more perishably flavoured dainties, but the paper-bag system has ushered in a beneficient era of democracy by which cheap and costly foods alike may be made to yield the utmost fragrance of which each is capable. By means of paper envelopes, the coarser kinds of food develop a most attractive savour which gourmands and fastidious eaters would never credit such items could possess. The housewife, whose purse is limited, may therefore pluck up heart, for even if her table cannot compete on the same terms with that of her wealthier sister, she can at least take courage at the thought that her family is being provided with the most nutritive and appetising materials that it is possible to purchase for the money she can spend on them.