HOME ECONOMICS.

Southern Cross, Volume 13, Issue 52, 24 March 1906, Page 7

HOME ECONOMICS.

Improper cooking is responsible for the spoiling of much excellent meat. Then the butcher is blamed for sending up tough joints. ‘A roast scorched black outside, and red-raw within is badly cooked ; so is a roast that is toughened by heat from outer crust to core. The roasting axioms are threefold ; so are the boiling rules. For a roast a quarter of an hour is allowed for each pound of meat and i of an hour over. The meat is first put very close to a fierce fire and allowed to seal its pores up quickly. Being composed of fibrin, which is a form of albumen, the outer coat is coagulated by the sharp heat, and an impenetrable film or coating is formed over the surface. This is a sealing process, and after it no juice can escape. When this has been done on all sides the meat is drawn away and loft to cook slowly at a small distance from the fire. The third mile for roasting is continual basting with the dripping. For boiling, the same axiom as for roasting is right. The meat is boiled furiously for five minutes to obtain an outer sealing, and then is only allowed to simmer. The time is as for roasting. The third rule is as to skimming. If much scum arises, the sealing has not been done rightly, and the juices are escaping. Scum is albumen escaped from the tissues. It ought to remain in and form juice. For white meats a little more time is ■ allowed than for red, so each pound has twenty minutes of cooking time. Rabbit pies are poisonous if a hole is not made in the crust. A ptomaine poison forms in the jelly, due to a principle in the vapour, which should be allowed to escape. A chicken’s skeleton gives one pint and a half of good stock! Different soups might be made with this stock, according as it is thickened with haricots, peas, pea meal, macaroni, semolina, vermicelli, or lentils. Different flavourings should bo used with each thickening. A wire sieve is a necessity in puree making. Any vegetable can be rubbed through to form more digestible and appetising thickening for stock. ■A pennyworth of raw bones will, when stewed overnight, yield a pint of excellent stock. Pea shells boiled will rub through a sieve and thicken this. While pork takes five hours to digest, and will often upset a delicate system, tripe only takes half an hour. Sheep’s tripe and calves’ tripe are given away uncloaned by butchers. Cleaned, scraped, boiled in salt water, they are delicate and dainty, serving every purpose of cows’ tripe. A melt costs 4d ; i a gallon of good gravy stock can be obtained from one. The residue minced finely makes, with flavouring, a dish of mince to be served with mashed potatoes and a tureen of gravy. In moat cookery flavourings of different kinds go far, causing the same meat to appear in different guises as long as it lasts. Skewers should always be run through fat, never through lean, they let the juices out. Meat should never be washed, only wiped well. Slices of meat for hash must be well rolled in seasoned flour before being

warmed in the gravey. Hash should never boil up, only just simmer, as otherwise bits of leather-like stuff will be made of the meat. Meat baked in the oven and never basted is often like tough leather throughout. In baking a very hot oven is wanted for five minutes, then the heat should be reduced .for gentle cooking. A few fowls are an economy in meat production. They eat up all the table scraps, yielding eggs in return and chickens. A mincing machine is a necessity in meat economy. It operates in the formation of many savories from small meat shops.