Vegetarian Cook Book

Mix the dry ingredients, add the eggs slightly beaten, gradually add the hot milk, and cook in double boiler. When cool, season with the vanilla. CREAM FILLING NO. 2 Cream, 1 cup. Egg whites, 2. Beat the cream until stiff, and add to the well-beaten whites; sweeten, color, and flavor to taste. LEMON FILLING Eggs, 6. Sugar, 1 cup. Lemons, 2. Beat the egg yolks until thick ; add the sugar, and the rind and juice of the lemons. Cook in a double boiler, stirring constantly until it thickens; then pour it over the beaten whites. Allow to cool before using, BOILED ICING Egg whites, 2. Sugar, 1 cup. Water, i/i cup. Boil the sugar in water until it will spin a thread; then pour slowly over the well-beaten whites, beating all the while. MAPLE FROSTING Maple sirup, 1 cup. Egg whites, 2. Beat the egg whites stiff, and pour over them while hot the maple sirup, which should previously be boiled until it will spin a thread when a drop of it is drawn between the fingers. Maple sugar may be dissolved in water and treated in the same way. The egg whites should be beaten all the time the sirup is being poured on them. DISHES Thin batters are about the consistency of thin cream. Thick batters are like cream. Still thicker batters, which may be poured in a continuous stream, are called pour batters. Any batter is a pour batter until it is made so stiff that it breaks or drops in the pouring, when it is called a drop batter. It will remain a batter until too stiff to be beaten, when it becomes a dough. Doughs, like batters, are of varying degrees of thickness, ranging from those just stiff enough to be handled, to those which may be rolled thin as paper. Generally speaking, one full measure of flour to one scant measure of liquid makes a pour batter; two full measures of flour make a drop batter ; and three full measures make a dough ; although, for various reasons, these proportions are subject to many modifications. If the ingredients in batters were simply mixed and cooked slowly, the resulting substances would be hard and compact, unfit for human digestion. Hence, to obviate this, and to make them light and porous, we must resort to other processes. This is accomplished by means of the expansion of incorporated air, by the generation of gas within the mixture, or by a combination of both methods, supplemented by quick cooking before the gas has a chance to escape. Air at seventy degrees expands to about three times its volume when exposed to the temperature of a hot oven. Consequently, as a mixture heats in cooking, incorporated (237) air expands, giving the desired lightness. Air is incorporated or enclosed in batters by beating the mixture thoroughly, as in making whole wheat gems; by adding eggs to the beaten mixture, as in popovers; and by the gas obtained by the union of an acid with an alkaline carbonate, as in the use of baking powders. In batters made light by the admixture of air, one must exercise care in beating, in order actually to incorporate and retain the air. When eggs are added to the mixture, the glutinous consistency of the albumin they contain assists in retaining the entangled air. LIGHT BREAD