The school kitchen textbook

Stew the tomatoes, add the soda, salt, and pepper, and rub through a strainer. Boil the milk in a large double boiler. Cook the corn-starch in one tablespoon of the butter in a small saucepan ; add gradually about one cup of the hot milk. Stir it carefully into the boiling milk and cook ten minutes. Cut the remainder of the butter into small pieces and stir into the milk. Add the tomatoes, and w^hen hot and well mixed strain into the hot tureen. Recipe, No. 105. Browned Crackers § tsp. butter to each whole cracker. Split round crackers in halves, spread the inside with a thin layer of butter. Put them, buttered side up, into a pan and brown in a hot oven. Serve plain or with soups and oyster stews. LESSON XXVI MACARONI Macaroni is a nutritious and economical food and should be used more freely than it is. Much of the dislike for it arises from ignorance as to the proper mode of cooking. It is made from the choicest varieties of wheat, — a grain which contains all the substances needed for food, though not in the proper proportion. Wheat lacks water and fat. Macaroni, being only wheat flour and water made into a hard, dry paste, is not palatable unless cooked, till tender, in plenty of water or other liquid, and seasoned well or combined with other foods, particularly some form of fat, as butter, milk, cheese, eggs, or meat broth. Macaroni is prepared in a variety of forms, — spaghetti, Italian paste of fanciful shapes, vermicelli, and round, tubular, and flat macaroni. The paste, while soft, is rolled into sheets, and cut with fancy cutters, or it is forced through metallic plates which have perforations, sometimes in the form of small rings with the center of the hole filled. It is then dried thoroughly and will keep in a dry place a long time. Macaroni, as often served, is hard and dry, or moist and tasteless. On account of the uneven surface which the macaroni assumes in the serving dish and which hardens on the edges when in the hot oven, a sauce, either white or tomato, should be poured over it to fill the spaces. Then cover with buttered crumbs which in baking will make a crisp brown crust. Recipe, No. 106. Macaroni One half cup macaroni, measured after breaking into inch pieces. Cook in boiling salted water twenty minutes, [illustration: MACARONI 183] or until tender. Drain, pour cold water through it, and serve plain, with hot white sauce or tomato sauce, or use it with meat, in scalloped meat. Or cover it with sauce, grated cheese, and buttered crumbs and bake until the crumbs are brown. Recipe, No. 107. Savory Macaroni Have ready a stewpan half full of rapidly boiling water, add one tablespoon of salt, one fourth teaspoon of mixed whole spice, and two slices of onion. Let it boil ten minutes, then remove the spice and onion, and»add one cup of macaroni broken into inch bits. Let it cook until tender, then drain off the water, and add one fourth cup of butter, one cup of grated Parmesan cheese, and a dash of paprika. Pour over it one half cup of chicken stock and two tablespoons of thick cream, and after they have cooked five minutes turn out into a hot dish. LESSON XXVII DRIED PEAS AND BEANS