The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1885-11-07

Ihe OBJECT OF cooking, says ]. b.
Hodgkins in the H0usekeeber, is to bring
about mere chemical changes in articles
of food when exposed to the influence
of heat. Baking, frying, boiling or
roasting are all so many different methods
of applying heat. The commonest, the
most convenient, the cheapest and
| quickest of these methods is frying,
which can be applied to almost all arti-
cles of food, which requires the least
apparatus and the small fire, yet of all
methods is the least understood, the
one which destroys most food, and is
the cause of more indigestion and dys-
pepsia than all other methods combined.
The reason of this is that in many SUBJ
stances the admixture of fat prevents
chemical processes of cooking from
having their proper development. The
perfection of frying would be to have
food fried without coming into contact
with the fat at all. But as thisis, of course,
self-evident impossibility, the next
best thing is to have the food come in
contact with the fat as little as possible
This is accomplished simply by having
the fat hot. Grease of every descrip-
tion is capable of being heated to very
much higher temperature than water;
in fact, it 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 precisely the reason why, for pur-
poses of frying, fat should always be
boiling hot. For any article of food,
doughnut for example, dipped into
boiling fat, is Immediately covered all
over by thin crust of burnt dough
which prevents the fat from penetrating
further in and enables the rest of the
doughnut to be exposed to a great de-
gree of heat than can be applied TO it
by any other method. Perfect frying
is the perfection of cooking, but so soon
as the fat is not sufficiently hot to create
the burnt crusts around the article fried,
the fat penetrates il and absolutely pre-
vents cooking from taking place at all.
If the fat is not boiling, bubbling hot,
the process that takes place is not cook
ing, but simply drenching the food with
a tepid fat and rendering it totally in
digestible. 1t makes no difference how
hot the fat is afterward, the mischief is
done the moment the fat penetrates in
side.
All perfectly fried food has thin,
crisp, brown outside crust (which has
fectly free from even the suspicion of
fat inside, except what was intentionally
put there by the cook. All housekeepers
know that to fry we'll 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-
fection; tepid fat penetrates everywhere,
and does not cook at all, but actually
prevents cooking. Any housekeeper
who reads this, and chooses to profit by
it need never put any greasy, fried,
half-cooked food upon her table. The
hotel secret consists in having the fat
boiling hot before the things are put in.
There is one other condition which
follows naturally from this first one, but
which is almost invariably lost sight of
even by good cooks and that is that the
fat should entirely cover the article to
be fried. The reason of this is, that the
part not at once covered by the fat re-
mains cold, coolS off the fat near it,
and then absorbs the tepid fat just the
same as if it had never been hot. Fry
ing pans should be deep, well-filled,
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-cook-
ed within. 1t is a popularity of the
outside crust of things fried in boiling
fat that the fat itself drips off from it as
readily as water; hence, well-fried ar
ticles are neither greasy in appearance
nor very greasy in reality. Frying ought
TO be as easy as boiling.