Domestic science (Clark, Cornell home economics)

Thickening for Soups. Soups are thickened with flour, cornstarch, or rice flour, 1 tablespoonful for a quart of soup, heaping. Flour is the cheapest, but cornstarch gives a smoother consistency. Mix the flour with a little cold liquid until it is smooth; add liquid until it can be poured easily into the boiled soup. Be sure to boil the soup fifteen or twenty minutes after the thickening is added, in order that there may be no raw taste. Where butter and flour are used, butter may be rubbed to a cream, mixed with the flour, and then made into a paste with a little of the soup. A better way is to put the butter into a small saucepan and when melted and bubbling stir in the flour quickly until smooth. (Be careful not to brown the butter for any white soup.) Then add gradually about one cup of hot soup, letting it boil and thicken as you add the soup. It should be thin enough to pour. In vegetable soups or purees, as soon as the hot butter and flour are blended they may be stirred at once into the soup. The hot butter cooks the flour more thoroughly than it can be cooked in any other way. When a brown thickening is desired, as in mock-turtle soup, melt the butter, let it become brown, as it will without burning; then add all the flour at once and stir quickly, so that every particle of it may be moistened in the hot butter. Add the water or soup gradually. Flour that is browned while dry, either in the oven or over the fire, colors but does not thicken. A certain amount of moisture of either fat or water is necessary with the heat to swell thoroughly the grains of starch in the flour. Thickened soups should have about the consistency of good cream. Purees are thicker. Potato Soup — Home Recipe. 1 pt. milk, 3 potatoes, 1 tbsp. chopped onion, 1 stalk celery, J tsp. celery salt, 1 tsp. salt, ^ s.s. pepper (white), i tbsp. flour, 1 tbsp. butter. School Recipe. \ c. milk, ^ potato, 1 spk. chopped onion, 1 small piece of celery (or celery salt), a spk. salt, a spk. pepper, ^ level tsp. flour, ^ level tsp. butter. Method. Boil and mash the potatoes and heat the milk. Put the celery and onion in milk and cook. Add hot water and seasoning to the mashed potato. Rub the mixture through the strainer, and put it on to boil again. Melt the butter and, when it bubbles, add the flour. When the mixture bubbles, stir it into the boiling soup. Let it boil five minutes and serve very hot. If too thick, add more hot milk. The celery salt may. be omitted if you have the fresh celery, or you may put one tablespoonful of fine chopped parsley into the soup just before serving. Order op Lesson 1. Review the cooking of potatoes. 2. Discussion of the recipe, and easiest way to make the soup in the class. 3. Summary of the recipe may be given by one pupil. 4. Practice work. 5. Serve the soup with wafers, or toasted bread. 6. Review the whole lesson. STEAMED BROWN BREAD Lesson XXI Nature of the Steamer. The steamer consists of two parts, — the outer part, and the inner with holes in the bottom, or just a shelf wth holes which fits into the outer dish. The outer dish is put into the water and the steam comes up through the holes into the other part of the dish, taking its heat to the article to be cooked, which is in another dish, upon the shelf of the steamer. Improvised Steamer. With no regular steamer, put the batter into the tin cup, and put the cup into the small saucepan containing a little water. Cover inner dish. Small steamers may be made to order. Advantages of Steaming. An article that is cooked over steam cannot bum; it does no harm to let it cook a few minutes after it is done. Steamed Brown Bread — Home Recipe. 1^ c. rye meal (or white flour), IJ cups yellow com meal, 1 c. graham (wheat), 1 tsp. soda, 1 tsp. salt, 1^ c. boiling water, 1 scant cup molasses, 1^ c. milk.