The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1871-08-04
The Philosophy of FRYING.

The object of all cooking is to bring
about those chemical changes in the ar
ticles of food which nature everywhere
produces, in vegetable and animal sub
stances, when exposed TO the influence
of heat. Baking, frying, boiling, or
roasting are all only so many different
methods Of applying heat. The COM
monest, the most convenient, the cheap
est and quickest of these methods is
frying. which can be applied to almost
all articles of food, which requires the
least apparatus and the smallest fire;
yet of all methods it is the least one
understood. the one which destroys the
most food, and is the cause of more in
digestion and dyspepsia than all the
other methyds combined. The reason
of this is that in many substances the
admiXture of fat prevents the chemical
processes of cooking from having their
proper development. The perfection of
! frying would be to have the food fried
without coming into contact with the
! fat at all. But as this is, Of course, q
selfevident lmpossibility, the next best
thing is 10 have the food come into con-
tact with the fat as little as possible.
This is accomplished simply by having
the fat hot. Grease of any description
is capable of being heated to very
much higher temperature than water,
in fact ii can be made almost three
times as hot as boiling water When
fat is at its boiling point it is so hot that
any article of food brought into contact
with it is actually burnt, and this is pre-
cisely the reason why, for purposes Of
frying, fat should always be boiling hot.
For any article of food, doughnut, for
example, dipped into the boiling fat, is
immediately covered all over by thin
crust Of burnt doughnut, which pre-
vents the fat from penetrating further
in, and enables the rest of the dough-
nut to be exposed to a greater degree of
heat than can be applied by any other
process, without coming in contact with
the fat, and the natural chemical pro-
cesses go on inside with q greater viva
city and to q greater degree Of perfec-
ton than can be obtained by any other
method. Perfect frying is the pertec.
ton of cooking, but so soon as the fat
is not sufficiently hot TO create the
burnt crust around the article fried,
then the fat penetrates it and absolute
" prevents cooking from taking place
at all. If the fat is not boiling, bub-
bling hot, the process that takes place
is not cooking, but simply drenching
the food with tepid fat, and rendering
it totally indigestible. 1t makes no diff
ference how hot the fat is made after
ward, the mischief is done the moment
the fat penetrates inside. All perfectly
fried food has a thin, crisp, brown out
side crust, which has in itself pleasant,
relishing taste, and is perfectly free
from even the suspicion of fat inside,
except what was intentiOntionally put
there by the cook. All housekeepers
know that to fry well their fat should
be hot. But they do not attend to it
half as scrupulously as they would if
they understood the true philosophy of
it. Boiling, bubbling, hot fat cannot
penetrate anything, and cooks to per-
lection; tepid fat penetrates every
where and does not cook at ALL but ac-
tually prevents cooking. Any house
keeper who reads this, and chooses to
profit by it, need never put any greasy,
fried, half-cOoked and indigostible food
upon her table. The whole secret con.
sists in having the fat Jo,lmg lot Gftore
the things are put in. There is one other
condition which follows naturally from
this first one, but which is almost inva-
riably lost sight of even by good cooks,
and that is that the fat should entirely
cover the article 10 be fried. The rea-
son of this is, that the part not at once
covered by the fat remains cold. cools
off the fat near it. and then absorbs the
tepid fat just the same as if it had never
been hot. Frying pans should be deep,
well filed, and heated to the boiling
point, and then it is easy to turn out
fried food crisp, brown, and dry on the
outside, and perfectly soft, moist, and
well cooked within. 1t is peculiarly
of the outside crust Of things fried in
boiling fat that the fat itself drops of
from it as readily as water hence, well
fred articles are neither greasy in APP
pearance nor very greasy in reality.
Frying ought to be as easy as boiling
Christian tnion.