FoodNet

Elements of the theory and practice of cookery

1901

Page 38

Presented as published in 1901. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
1. Serve berries, apple sauce, sliced peaches, or sliced well-ripened bananas in the saucer with the mush. FUEL FOODS: SOME STARCHY PLANTS 77 2. Stir figs or dates cut in pieces, into mush before serving it. (Especially good with farina.) The mush may be moulded with the fruit in it. 3. Serve cold moulded cereals with peaches or bananas, sliced. (Plate y, facing p. 61.) 4. Serve baked bananas on separate plates. (For recipe see p. 233.) Directions for cooking Cereals 142. 1. Stir the cereal gradually into the required quantity of boiling salted water, and cook over hot water until done. (See table on p. 79.) 2. To save time and fuel, soak uncooked Cereals (Irish oats, cracked Avheat, hominy, etc.) in cold water before cooking. Those requiring more than one hour to cook should be cooked the day before they are to be eaten and reheated in the morning. If necessary to hasten the cooking of a cereal, boil it from fifteen to thirty minutes, tlien steam until done. 3. Cook steam-cooked cereals, as a rule, twice as long as is directed on the package. Only hy long cooking are cereals made ivliolesome and tv ell-flavor ed ; undercooked, as most people eat them, they occasion sickness often laid to other causes. 4. Stir coarse, flaky cereals as little as possible. Fine, granular cereals may be beaten. To keep these fine cereals from lumping, mix them with cold water instead of sprinkling them dry into boiling water. 5. Cereals should absorb all the water they are cooked in ; if too moist when nearly done, cook un- covered for a time. 78 THEORY AND PRACTICE OF COOKERY 6. To improve rice, farina, or hominy, stir in one- quarter of a cupful of milk about fifteen minutes before taking from the fire, and leave the cover off during the rest of the time. 143. Food value of cereals. — Cereals are the most important of vegetable foods. From the plains of northern Europe and Asia, where barley grows in a climate too cold for other grains, to the rice-fields of India and our Southern states, man depends on some cereal for his daily bread. One reason for this is that they contain in varying proportions all the kinds of foodstuffs necessary to support life. Containing so much starch as they do (63 to 76 per cent), they are valuable chiefly as fuel foods. Oatmeal and cornmeal, having more fat than other grains, are especially good winter foods. Oatmeal is richer in food material, but on account of its indigestible fibre, less nutritious, except for strong, hard-working people, than other grains. Kice is almost pure starch ; as it contains no fat, we naturally eat butter or cream with it ; but this lack of fat makes it all the better for use in a tropical climate. Things to be remembered about Breakfast Cereals 144. 1. It is better not to eat cereals at all than to eat them under-cooked. 2. Have the mush stiff enough to be chewed. If too soft, it is swallowed without being mixed with saliva, and is, in consequence, less readily digested. FUEL FOODS: SOME STARCHY PLANTS 79 3. Sugar, a heat-giver, is not needed with cereals ; milk and cream, on the other hand, supply fat and other substances, of which cereals have little. TABLE SHOWING TIME OF COOKING, AND PROPORTIONS OF SALT AND WATER, FOR BREAKFAST CEREALS Kind. ill m Cupfuls of Water to One Cupful of Cereal. Method of Cooking.