Principles of cookery

The mixing of cake often has more to do with its texture than the proportion of materials used, though both have their influence. It is an interesting experiment to make a good cooky dough and bake portions of it with different proportions of flour. Take, for example, the familiar 1-2-3-4 cake formulas and transpose the flour and eggs so that we use one cup of butter, two cups of sugar, three eggs and four cups of flour. The stiffness of this dough will vary with size of the eggs and the quality of the flour. Often some liquid and more flour are added, making a less rich mixture, and then ' some baking-powder or its equivalent will be needed, otherwise the creaming of the butter and the eggs will bring sufficient air into the dough. Even before all the flour is worked in, some of the dough may be spread on a tin and cut in shapes after baking. When slightly stiffer, bits of the mixture may be dropped on the tin, fruit or nuts put over them and they will spread out in dainty little cakes. If still more flour is added, but before the dough is quite firm enough to use a rolling-pin, small balls of the dough may be shaped round with the hands and flattened on the pan with the under surface of a smooth tin cup. A dough in this stage may be chilled, and then can be rolled easily, and the resulting cakes will be much richer than if more flour had been worked in. Deft, experienced hands produce satisfactory results with doughs, because they can shape them without working in an excessive amount of flour. Through the test questions,5 the attention of our pupils has been called to the planning of meals for a household, for this is an important part of the housekeeper's duties. Under Part I we asked for menus introducing as many dishes as feasible containing milk and cheese. Such menus would be useful where the meat markets were poor and milk abundant, since one may thus secure similar nutritive elements, and usually at less expense than for meats. After Part II, the request was made for a menu for two days when eggs were cheap, and for two days more when they were expensive. This was done because few housekeepers pay sufficient attention to market prices. They get the idea that a certain food is costly, and therefore not to be used at all, when, perhaps, a careful comparison of the prices of all ingredients would show it to be cheap at some seasons. Angel and sponge-cakes, for example, when eggs are at their lowest price, are less expensive than average butter-cakes. With eggs at 25 cents a dozen and butter at 25 cents a pound, a sponge-cake with five eggs costs no more than a cake with two eggs and half a cup of butter. If the whites of twice as many eggs are used, the actual cost is no greater, since the yolks are available for other purposes. At the close of the lessons we asked for a week's menu from each householder represented, with suggestions for their improvement, without increase of labor or expense. The responses show an increased attention to the details that count in feeding a family satisfactorily to all concerned. Yet menu-making is still a great bugbear to many pupils, and a few. more hints on the subject may be helpful. Many are hampered seriously by the habits and wishes of different members of their households.