Bismarck weekly tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1884-1943, 1890-10-17
TEACH HER TO COOK.
SUGGESTIONS ABOUT TRAINING THE
YOUNG DAUGHTER.

Things That Girls Will Readily Learn.
Every child, especially every girl, has an
instructive desire to make and NEEDLE
wherever any culinary processes are going
on, and every mother md every kitchen
maid are accustomed to give the little one
a bit of dough when mixing bread or cake,
and of letting her bake her own little con.
lection in a saucer. It is q wise mother
who takes advantage of this natural in
clination in a girl to make her a cook be-
times, and to urn the taste and tendency
to account in the family.
To be a good cook, to be a good nurse, to
be a good needle woman are the three
things absolutely essential to the happi-
ness, and to the continuance in happiness,
of the great majority of all women, what
ever more it may be given them to be; and
if the things leading to such desired pro-
fciency are taught in season there will be
30 much more time left for the other things
that invite after the foundation of the
positively necessary is laid.
The business can be begun by letting a
child of 8 or 10, for example, make a bowl
of cruel, overseeing its preparation so care
fully that there can be nc mistake made,
and that the consumer of the Cruel can
praise it so sincerely that her ambition will
be fired for all the future, so far rs Cruel is
concerned, to make it perfectly. She will
put a.quart of water in the saucepan over
a good fire, and then wet a tablespoonful
of oatmeal in a little cold water, and stir
it smooth as the smoothest paste, and when
the water boils she will pour the paste into
the saucepan, stirring it all the time, when
half done adding a tablespoonful of salt,
boiling a half hour, and straining through
a fine wire strainer, when, if it has not
scorched, the invalid will have a fastidious
appetite who is not pleased with it.
SOUPS FIRST, THEN BREAD.
Indeed, many we'll people find it an agree
able and satisfying dish; and we have
known of a housekeeper, in distress for
soup, serving this oatmeal cruel, we'll salt
ed, and with some celery tops thrown into
the tureen as it came to the table, for the
sake OF appearances, and experiencing the
delight of one who has made a new dis
covery at the relish with which her guests
disposed of her white soup.
When our little cook is sufficiently NC
complished in this simplest cruel, to which
learning in later years panada and the
more complicated sorts can be added, her
attention can be turned to bread, that one
most necessary thing in the support of
civilized life; and her initial step in the
process can be the concoction of some cream
of tartar biscuit, in which she will be shown
how to rub a piece of butter the size of an
egg into a quart of -four till there are no
Jumps, adding then q teaspoonful of salt
and two heaping t%saspoonfuls of cream of
tartar, stirred in we'll, then wetting it with
Il pint of cold water in which a heaping
%teaspoonful of soda has been dissolved.
When well mixed pour it out on the
board into enough -four to let it be nodded
smooth, rolled to surface a half inch thick
and the biscuits cut out with a tumbler, if
there is no biscuit cutter, and baked in a
well creased pan. When her biscuits have
been admired, as they ought to be, she can
proceed to bread. Here the question of
yeast complexities matters at the outset;
but as yeast is now so easily obtained at
the bakers, and in the compressed form,
we will assume that she has it on hand,
and II she has to learn to prepare it that
exciting business can come afterward.
If now she scalds a half pint of milk
and adds it to a gill of water in which a
quarter of a yeast cake has been dissolved,
together with a teaspoonful of salt and
another of butter, and stirs all that into a
quart of flour, turns it out and kneads it
till her little arms are tired, and another
stronger person must finish the half hours
kneading for her, and then puts it into a
pan, and cuts a transverse slit in the top
of the mass, and leaves it to rise over
night, she will have completed the first
chapter of her work.
AFTER BREAD, sWEETMEATs.
In the morning, when the dough may
have doubled in height, she will take it
out, and knead it again till the little arms
can do no more, and assistance is called in;
then she will shape it into a loaf, put it
into u buttered pan, prick it with the cary
ing fork, and bake 1t in a hot oven three
quarters Of an hour, when it will not be
her fault or the fault of her overseer if she
has not produced a good loaf of bread and
is not entitled to be called lady, or loaf
giver.
Gingerbreads and cakes and dainties will
come into a later year of our little cooking
school, as in this year only the essentials
are dealt with, although to hungry school
children cookies and snaps and jumbles
sometimes seem more essential than bread
and meat, and they quite agree with that
wit who thought he could dispense with
the necessaries of life if he could only have
ULc luAuCleS.
But all this accomplished week by week
it is time for the young cook to learn how
to roast the meat, wiping and not washing
the beef and mutton; how to boil tin
hot water If the meat is fresh, in cold If it
is salt or corned; how to broil a steak, by
soaring each side quickly as possible in or
der to retain the juices; how to make and
season a stew; leaving the dressing of a
fowl to a much more advanced period of
kitchen lore, together with the compost
ton of entrees and all such elaborate Of
fairs. 1t will be time, too, with this roast
or stew, to learn about the preparation of
the simpler vegetables; how to cook pota-
toes, for instance, by plunging them into
boiling water, and when done pouring off
the water, sprinkling them with salt, and
leaving them one hot, evaporating, burst
ing moment over the fire. '"4AE'"
And when with this our little maid has
learned how to make a plain custard pud-
ding, by beating five eggs with two table
spoonfuls of sugar into a quart of milk,
adding half a teaspoonful Of havoring ex-
tract, peach or lemon, and Il generous
pinch of salt, grating nutmeg over the
top, and baking three-quarters of an hour,
she can %truthfully style herself a good
plain cook; and she has learned her art,
moreover, in a way as good as play.-Har-
Der's Bazaar So. sr.,E v