Principles of food preparation

The macaroni should be drained when cooked, and some persons like to hold the colander for a moment under a stream of cold water from the faucet, so as to prevent the strips from clinging to one another. The boiled macaroni may be served with a white sauce, or may be combined with tomato like cabbage (see Chapter III, page 16), or with cheese like potato (see Chapter II, page 9), or it may be mixed with apple sauce. SPONGE PUDDINGS Lemon Sponge Ingredients. One cup of water, a pinch (one-eighth teaspoonful) of salt, four tablespoonfuls of sugar, two of lemon juice, and one and one-half of cornstarch. The whites of one or two eggs, stiffly beaten. Method. Boil the water, add the salt, then the cornstarch, either blended with sugar or rubbed to a smooth paste with a little cold water. Cook in a double boiler for 30 m., or for 15 m. if cooked directly over the fire. In the latter case the mixture should be constantly stirred to avoid burning. Remove from the heat, and while still in the saucepan beat in the stiffly beaten whites of eggs. Add the lemon juice, beating this in also. Mold and chill. Repeat this pudding, using the following method. Add the lemon juice, sugar, and cornstarch at the same time, and cook them together for 15 to 30 m.; then proceed as before. Compare the flavor and consistency of the two puddings. Orange Sponge Omit the lemon juice, and substitute orange juice for part or all of the water. A good proportion is half and half, orange juice and water. Cook the cornstarch in this mixture for half the time allowed for the lemon sponge, ' add the sugar, then the beaten whites of eggs. Mold, etc., as before. Compare the flavor and consistency of this pudding with that of the lemon pudding made by the first method. Note. The lemon and orange sponge puddings were chosen for the purpose of illustrating a principle in the cooking of starch and a principle in the cooking of lemon juice. Other delicious sponge puddings may be made by using grape juice, huckleberry juice, the juice from canned or preserved fruit — that from canned cherries being particularly good — or indeed almost any fruit juice or fruit pulp. Experiments to Illustrate Methods of Inducing Chemical Change in Starch Prepare a starch paste by boiling for a few seconds five grams of pure potato starch with 500 cc. of distilled water. The starch should be rubbed to a paste in a little of the water before it is boiled, and this portion stirred into the remainder of the water as it boils. Prepare a solution of iodine by dissolving two grams of potassium iodide in 100 cc. of water. Add to this one gram of pure iodine, and shake the whole well together. This solution may be stored for future experimentation, but should be diluted to a strength of 2⅓ per cent, or 5 cc. of the solution to 200 cc. of water, before use. 1. To 15 cc. of the starch paste in a test tube add two drops of a 20 per cent solution of sulphuric acid. Boil for some minutes, testing from time to time by taking out a drop on the end of a glass rod, dropping it on a dish, and adding to it one drop of the diluted iodine solution.