"INSPIRED" COOKS

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 153, 26 December 1936, Page 16

"INSPIRED" COOKS

AINID THOSE WHO FAIL

There are housewives who are inspired cooks, whose dishes are never failures; there are others who are quite definitely failures in the kitchen and who spoil good food even under the best conditions; and then there are a vast number of housewives who are never quite sure whether their essays in cooking will be an outstanding success or quite a failure, states a writer in the Melbourne "Age." They may make the same dish several times and it will turn out splendidly; they will make it a fourth or a fifth time and it is quite spoilt. Why? They read a new recipe and try it, and it is not a success, or another recipe almost exactly the same and it is. "why Always they are wondering about their success or their failure—quite all right —and cooking becomes a real nightmare instead of an interesting adventure. ' -

The housewife who has inherited a stock of well-tried and well-proved recipes is fortunate, for she is able to' begin her cooking with the happy knowledge that her recipes are basically sound; but many a young cook has to find out by bitter experience those recipes which are good and which are not foredoomed to failure, because the foundation proportions are not correct.

If the recipe is correctly chosen, then failure may be due to-the method of making or mixing, to the actual cooking, or to a misunderstanding of the effect of heat. For instance, in cooking food in water it is possible to achieve two quite different results. Meat, fruit, vegetables, etc., can be cooked so as to retain their maximum flavour, or these same foods can be cooked so that the.diffusion of the juices is procured. In making soup, for instance, it is necessary to extract the juices from the meat or, vegetables, but in boiling meat for eating, then the maximum flavour must be retained. This is achieved by plunging the meat into boiling salted water, while in soup making the meat is placed in cold water and the temperature raised very slowly. Perhaps the home cook's biggest failures are in cake making. First of all she should examine her recipes so as to consider the proportions. How much baking powder or carbonate of soda and cream of tartar should there be in proportion to the flour; how much sugar and butter or fat, how many eggs. For plain cakes the basic proportions are from four to eight ounces of fat, two to six eggs, four to eight ounces of sugar, two teaspoonfuls of baking powder, and from four to eight ounces of fruit to a pound of flour.

Within these limits your recipe is sound. For rich cakes the quantities are from eight ounces to a pound of flour, the same proportion of sugar, from eight ounces to three pounds of fruit, any number of eggs from six to 14, and one teaspoonful of baking powder to a pound of flour. For sponge cakes a' safe proportion is for each egg add the weight in sugar and half the weight in flour. But even with a thoroughly sound recipe failures do occur. A common happening in making fruit cake is to find the fruit sink to the bottom. This is generally due to the mixture being too moist, or it may happen if the fruit has been added to the creamed butter and sugar before some flour has been stirred in. Perhaps .the cake has sunk in the centre. This may be due to using too much raising (baking powder or soda and cream of tartar), or the oven may have been too hot; this is generally the reason when sponge cakes, rich cakes, and gingerbread sink in the centre. Occasionally, slam-

| ming the oven door will do this, especially if the door is slammed, causing an inrush of cold air, before the cake is set. Perhaps a cake will have a peak in the centre, or. the top may be cracked i and inside boiled over. Too hot an oven generally causes this, or the cake may have been placed too near the top, or too near a solid sheet which reflects the heat, with the result that the top cooked and hardened too quickly, and the inside, when it began to rise, had to force its way out. A thin cage tin may be the reason, why a cake has burned on the bottom, or this may be the result of placing the cake too low down in a gas or electric oven. Sometimes a Swiss roll will crack badly. The reason for this will generally be found to be- too cool an oven, for a Swiss roll requires a hotter oven than a sponge cake. Sometimes the outside appearance of a cake is excellent, but when it is cut the mixture seems to be too close. Generally the reason for this is to be found in the mixing of the cake —the fat became oiled when it was rubbed into the flour. When this occurs in rich cakes it is probable that the fat and sugar have not been sufficiently beaten, and in sponge cakes when the eggs and sugar have not been whipped together for long enough. In sponge cakes, too, perhaps too great a proportion of flour has been added, for this has a tendency to make the mixture, close.