Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1886-04-22
Waste in the Kitchen.

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There is a useful article on this subject
in the Exchange and Mart. from the pen
of Miss j. Ascham.
A housewives duty is to prevent waste
She must therefore know what is likely to
go to waste and why, or perhaps she will
do Just what Is wanted to spoil things
which would have kept little longer if
they had been left alone. Most things in
the larder are perishable, but not all
alike.
Meat will keep three weeks in dry. frosty
weather, but not one week in damp. and
hardly day in very hot weather. If it
has been frozen, 1t must be in a rather
warm place three or four hours before it
is cooked. Meat should be taken down
from the hooks every day; well looked
over and wiped dry, and the hooks scald-
ed and dried before the meat is put up
again. Do not -four it.
In very hot weather it is sometimes nee
essary to rub salt over the outside of a
| joint which Is not to be cooked that day
1t must be carefully looked over when it
comes from the butcher and any doubtful
bits pared off and burnt If meat
shows signs of ''turning" it must
at once be put into a very hot
oven for half an hour, so as to be
| partly cooked. If it has really spoilt.
nothing will save it, because the inside of
| the joint is then bad; but if it is Drowned
not just scorched, in time, the inside will
be found perfectly nice. Of course. in
doubtful case, it may all be sliced up and
fried; but then, as joint, it is spoilt.
The dripping from half spoilt Joint is
useless for food, and the bone will GER
tainly spoil soup. Some cooks will plunge
/ 10 of IY1tn +C -
this additional wettiug is much more likely
to hasten the catastrophe. In hot weather
every bone must be baked, whether it is to
make stock that day or not. Soup is Just
as good from baked bones as from raw
ones. Every bone that has, been boiled
must be placed in a sharp heat and quite
dried, and SCRAPS which would help to
make stock must be burnt if the cook has
| no time Or room to make it. For one lit
| tie bone is enough to spoil all the milk
and cream, and will cause all perishable
things in the larder to be just ready to
decay.
All fat and suet should be cooked as
soon as possible after it comes into the
house; it should be wiped, sliced thin and
boiled for two or three hours, then strain
ed, and the skin, which seems like leather.
burnt in the middle of a hot fire. AS soon
as the fat is hard, it should be removed
from the gravy, soup or stock, wiped dry,
and folded in thin paper. In very hot
weather, sometimes it will not cake. Then
a plate must be spared for it. The super
f1uous fat from joint reduced to mince
should be treated in the same way.
Game and poultry should be drawn, but
not plucked or skinned, dried inside, and
hung head upward.
Milk is the most troublesome article in
the larder, and really wants little safe to
itself It takes up" the slightest suspi
cion of faint and becomes most objec-
tionable without turning sour. City peo-
pie, at any rate, should boil the milk as
soon as it comes in from April to Decem
Der. Then it should be strained into
clean flat pan, which must be scalded and
rinsed with first little soda, and then
clean water, every time it is used. Coun-
| try milk little sour may be used for a
| pudding, or to make scenes; but the milk
which has been ratified about from A.
M. to 8 or generally seems good for
nothing when stale.
! In case of serious illness in hot weather.
or whether young childs nOurishment is
In question, ice is necessary. In default
of professional apparatus, tie up as
much ice as half a yard of flannel will
hold, pass ttoutlath through the string,
and lay it across a metal tub; oval is more
convenient than rouod. The ice will hang
down and drip in the middle of the tub,
and jugs of milk, bottles of soda water,
or anything else will stand at the ends.
/ Cover the tub, stick and all with thick
board, and that with damp, almost wet
CLOTH The milk must be boiled first, but
must, of course, be cold before it is put
with the ice. A damp cloth, without ice,
keeps things much cooler than they are
when uncovered.
Cheese, uncut, only needs to be kept
dry. After it is cut it should be wrapped
! in a buttered paper scraped almost dry.
! Butter may be rendered less troublesome
in summer by being covered with huge
fOwer-pot large enough to inclose the
plate and rest in tray in which there is
| some cold water. Leaving butter in water
spOils it. Bread should be covered closely
! from the air. The pans want wiping once
or twice week, and then heating very
| hot: the bread must not be put in again
until the pan is cold, nor warm bread ever
covered up. Bakers bread often acquires
| a most disagreeable smell and taste if
these precautions are neglected.
All vegetables, when cut, may be kept
fresh by putting the stalks into water.
Servants generally insist on immersing
them, which favors decomposition
Clean, ner-laid eggs will keep quite
fresh for months if buried in dried salt
well closed
Boiled potatoes ought to be laid out on
a plate, and are then as good for frying
or MASKING as if they were freshly
| cooked. Servants have an unaccountable
fancy of throwing them away, or if
desired to fry them, chopping and mash
ing them first, which entirely spoils
them. If left heaped up they will often
spoil in one night. No vegetables should
be put into soup until the day that it is
to be used
If any soup, complete, is left, it must
be sharply boiled the next morning and
put into a fresh, clean pan. Cabbage, |
French beans and vegetable marrows are
better dressed as salad if they have I
cooled, and in hot weather are almost as
treacherous for keeping as shell-fsh.
Fruit, like vegetables, will keep very /
very fresh if you can manage to put the