Domestic science (1914 text-book)

3 tb cream 1 tp sugar tablespoon teaspoon Digitized by Google Work to be done: 1. Place the milk in a double boiler and heat it. 2. Mix sugar, starch, and salt. 3. Add this mixture very gradually to the hot milk, stirring constantly. 4. Cook until thick. 5. Dip the mold in cold water. 6. Pour the cooked mixture into the mold and set aside to cool. Principles: Another method of separating the starch grains before adding them to the hot liquid is to mix them with grains of salt and sugar. The little grains of salt and sugar separate the grains of starch sufficiently, especially if they are added slowly to the hot liquid. Then if the liquid is stirred while the sugar and starch mixture is added and until the mixture boils, there will be no danger of lumping. Serving: When the mold is cold, it should be turned into an individual glass dish and put on a small plate on which a fancy paper doily has been placed. Add 1 tp of sugar and the vanilla to the cream and turn over the mold. This makes a light, tasty dessert for either limcheon or dinner. Table manners: Rule: Never put the elbows on the table. Setting the table and serving guests: The English mode of serving is to set the whole of each course, often containing many dishes, at once upon the table, the hostess serving the soup, salad, and dessert, and the host carving and serving the fish and roast. This is the style usually seen every day at English, French, and American tables, where but one or two, or perhaps no maids are employed. By a compromise plan, or style, such dishes as the salad or dessert, which present an attractive appearance and can be Digitized by Google STARCH 65 served quickly and without much eflfort, are served by the hostess, and a fish, for instance, which is easily separated into individual portions, is served by the host on the plates set before him. The other dishes are served from the pantry. Cleaning up: 1. Soak the double boiler in cold water. 2. Gather all dishes together and pile each kind by itself. 3. Wash glassware first, being careful to put glass into warm water edgewise that it may be evenly heated so that it will not break. 4. Wash silver, china, porcelain, and kitchen utensils. 5. Wash and wipe stove and desk or table. 6. Wash and rinse towel and cloth. What has been learned: 1. Sugar and salt mixed with starch will separate starch grains just as well as will melted butter or cold liquid. 2. Starch swells, thereby stiffening the mixture so that when cold it will be quite firm. Digitized by Google Lesson XVni The Fireless Cooker (Reading) Some twenty years ago a Mr. Atkinson invented the Aladdin oven, a double-walled box with the space between the walls filled with a non-conducting substance (that Js, a substance which will hold, not throw oflf heat). By means of this oven a dinner can be cooked with the heat of an ordinary kerosene lamp. Soon after the invention of this oven, some poor people in Europe discoveredl that they could partially cook their food without a fire. They first cooked the food in the ordinary way about one-third the time required, and then put the kettle containing it into a closed box packed with hay. When opened some hours later, the food was found to be perfectly cooked. Although the fireless cooker is looked upon generally as a new discovery, it is in reality a modern type of this hay box and of the old-time brick oven — Dutch oven — an oven variously termed, but always used in one way. The old time oven was a companion to the "tallow dip," and the receptacle for the carrying of borrowed fire. It was old before George Washington's shoe buckles were new and before Boston held her first tea party.