Handbook of domestic science and household arts for use in elementary schools

Although none of the books whose titles are given above are either too technical or too expensive eventually to form a part of the working library of the grade teacher, yet for the benefit of those who have not access to large libraries, the writer would suggest beginning with the government publications, later adding to these Mrs. Richards's two little books, Dr. Green's Food Products, Yeo's Food in Health and Disease, Thompson's Practical Dietetics, and Mathieu Williams's Chemistry of Cookery. Food. — Atwater defines food as material which, when taken into the body, serves either to form tissue or yield energy, or both. This definition, he says, includes all ordinary food materials, since they both build tissue and yield energy. It includes sugar and starch, because they yield energy and form fatty tissue. It excludes the socalled nitrogenous extractives of meat (the chief part of beef tea), and likewise tea and coffee, because they neither build tissue nor yield energy, although they may at times be useful aids to nutrition. Milk Facts. — Milk contains all the elements needed for food, and each in about the right proportion. It is, moreover, easy to digest. For these reasons it has been justly called a perfect food. It is not only the exclusive food during the more or less brief infancy of the mammals, but many adults, even at the present time, live for the most part on it, drinking from four to seven pints per day. This is true of the Swedish and Norwegian peasants, the inhabitants of Swit- zerland and the Tyrol, the Bedouins of Arabia, and the people dwelling in the mountainous regions of Asia, and on the pasture lands of the Sahara. It is the main dependence of the modern physician in treatment of fever, and for invalids generally. In earlier ages, and indeed even now in many countries, it was the milk of asses, goats, camels, that was common. Now it is the milk of the cow that is the best known. This is because no other animal can be so easily and economically kept and propagated in proportion to its milk and meat producing powers. It is absolutely necessary that the milk should be a good quality, unadulterated with water, and from healthy, wellfed animals. Only an expert chemist is able to pronounce accurately upon the quality of milk; but public attention has been called of late so much to the subject of milk that . it is quite possible, even in cities, to secure good milk by paying a fair price for it. Milk undiluted with water clings to the glass. This is a much safer test than depending upon the color. That may be due to annetto. It should be kept from the beginning in absolutely clean vessels, and in a cool place. Cream. — After the milk has stood for some hours the cream rises to the top. This may form a thick layer, onefifth of the total thickness, or it may be very much thinner, depending for the most part upon the breed of cow. Butter. — Even a superficial examination shows that cream is very rich in fat. When it is agitated for some time — churned — this fat shakes itself free from its curdy envelope, and is collected together in the form of butter. Butter still contains some water and a very small per cent of curd. An excess of either of these elements will interfere with its keeping, and cause it to become rancid. For d J