Cookery book and general axioms for plain cookery

N.B. — (1) When the beans are to be served as a vegetable, putting them into boiling water will help to keep them whole,, and the dripping will prevent the skins breaking. (2) If the beans are allowed to stand after soaking, the starch will commence to change into sugar, making them much more palatable. (3) The beans vary very much in the time they take to soften. If they have been kept for a long time they are very difficult to get soft. HARICOT BEAN STEW. Ingredients : — 1 pint haricot beans. l| pints boiling water. A little dripping. 1 pint brown gravy. Method : — Prepare the beans as for a vegetable. Then put them into a saucepan with the water and dripping, and cook gently H hours, or until quite soft. Strain them, but do not . throw the water away, using it for the Brown Gravy instead of stock or plain water. Pour the gravy without straining, over the beans, and serve very hot. N.B. — (1) A little vinegar is an improvement, and it can be varied by the addition of other vegetables as liked, or more onions can be added in making the gravy. It is also very good served with rashers of bacon. (2) The water in which peas, beans, and lentils have been cooked should not be wasted, but used for soups stews or gravies ; indeed, a good, nourishing stock can be made from haricot beans. . (3) In this receipt the water will be reduced to about the right quantity for the gravy, so that none of the goodness is lost. (4) This stew is quite as nourishing and savoury as any meat stew, and the outside cost only 4d. BROWN GRAVY. Ingredients : — 1 small onion (scalded). | oz. dripping or butter. 1 tablespoonful of flour. 1 pint hot water or stock. Salt and pepper. Method : — Peel the onion and cut it into rings. Heat the dripping or butter in a saucepan and fry the onion in it until quite brown, but not burnt. Add the flour, stirring well, and then the water or stock gradually, still stirring until it boils, seasoning to taste and straining it. N.B. — This is a useful receipt for any stew, but if the onion is not liked it can be omitted. Great care must be taken in browning the flour with the fat, not to let it burn, or it will be indigestible. BAKED POTATOES. Ingredients : — Potatoes of equal size. Method : — Wash the potatoes very well and dry them with a cloth. Bake them in a hot oven, from one to two hours, according to size, or until quite done. Turn them occasionally, and they will be improved by pricking them just before finishing, to allow the steam to escape. N.B. — (1) This is the most wholesome method of cooking potatoes, partly because the water is evaporated by the dry heat of the oven, the degree of heat being twice that of boiling water, and partly due to the change which the starch undergoes by the influence of the greater heat. (2) New potatoes are not usually baked or steamed. Their skin is not fully grown, and is not of the cork-like nature of .43 the older potatoes, which prevents the escape of their own moisture ; and so the new potato is apt to be shrivelled and tough when baked, the sap having escaped. For this same reason, new potatoes, fresh from the earth, are much better in flavour than those that have been kept. This applies also to nearly all vegetables. ROLY-POLY PUDDING. Ingredients : — Suet paste (see receipt, page 34). About b lb. jam.