Foods and household management

spoon is eut in, sidewise, a rotary motion carries it down and up again, and it folds in the beaten egg as it goes. Kneading is a motion used with dough, and is a combination of a rocking and pressing motion, accomplished by the hands. A good result can be obtained by some bread machines, and this is the cleaner method. Rolling out is just what the term denotes, a rolling of a thick piece of dough by means of a cylindrical wooden " pin " to the thickness proper for cookies and crusts. Dry bread is also rolled to break it into fine crumbs. Pounding and grinding are usually accomplished for us now in factories in breaking of spices and coffee. It is better to have a coffee mill at home. The order of mixing is important in its effect in batters and doughs and is discussed in that chapter. Cooking processes. — For the beginnings of cooking we should need to go back to the days when game was roasted by the open fire, built, for warmth, or com parched on hot stones. Perhaps some root was cooked in the hot ashes. This primitive method of roasting we still use in camp fires, and in modified form wherever food is directly exposed to the heat of coal or gas. Water could not be a cooking medium until man advanced at least to the first stage of pottery making, when some rude basket daubed with clay was water-tight and sufficiently heat proof. Application of heat is the most difficult stage of the whole process of cookery. It is so easy to have the heat too intense, or too low, to expose the food for too long or too short a time to its action. Most of our apparatus fails to give us a uniform heat, the tendency being to an increase or decrease of temperature. Since the boiling temperature of water remains at 212° F., boiling is an easy process to manage, provided the water does not boil out. The presence of water insures a low or moderate temperature always. It requires patience and time to learn how to bring this natural force of heat under control. One novice who had allowed a flour paste to boil over and burn while she was looking out of the window remarked \ " We may forget, but they never do ! " — a pretty way of stating the steady working of nature's forces which we can harness for our use only by the exercise of reason and will and constant watchfulness. The unintelligent cook is impatient of slow processes, and cannot believe that food will finally be " done '' unless the water is at a *' galloping " boil, and a red-hot fire is keeping the oven at burning temperature. Look upon the application of heat as a continuation of nature's slow ripening process, a softening of tough fibers and a development of pleasing flavors. For Why do we cook at all except for these reasons? Primitive man thought only that the food had a better taste. He may have decided, too, that it was easier to masticate; but we have learned that in some cases we may, with right methods of cooking, make it easier to digest farther on in the alimentary canal. Modern science carries us a step farther and teaches us that cooking destroys lower organisms, such as harmful bacteria that may be present, and even animal parasites in meats. We cook, therefore, to improve the appearance of food, to develop flavors, to render some foodstuffs more digestible and to destroy microorganisms.