Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-06-18
GOVERNMENT COOK BOOK.
Safe and Sane Treatise Has Just Been
Issued

At length the Department of Agriculture
has struck a safe and conservative gait. II
has issued a cook book This Is not one of
the volumes that you have TO buy a pound
can of Skyrocket baking powder TO acquire
and it does not insist in every receipt that
to get the right taste TO a dish you have
to use q tablespoonful of Socum and Scim-
ems extract OF canned antelope. Neither
do you have to go down to the nearest de-
partment store and give up a dollar and q
half of good coin for a treatise bound In
green boards. with gold tooling on the cover
and a whole encyclopedias in the back Of
weights and measures that you never look
at and table of daily wages at various
rates per month, when in reality you do
your own cooking and can't afford to hire
q servant. The department cook book car
ries none OF this useless extra weight. 1t
is modest volume cooking vegetables
that is, a part of 1t is devoted to cooking
vegetables and the rest is filed with
learned treatise celulose tissue, woody
fibre, the proportions of mineral matter
and carbohy drates in various sorts OF roots.
tubers, cereals and legumes. These are
things that the average housewife does not
know and she can get them all without
money and without price IL she has draw
with the Department Of Agriculture, or she
will marry a farmer and get him to contrib
ut3 CDScTVdtlOiS On poldtO Oubo W AAo
nearest experiment station. This last, or
course, is a pretty heavy price to pay for
acquiring the book, but IT is worth II TO
ge. real cook book issued on government
presses with the stamp OF the adminisTa-
tion's approval on II.
Nobody wants to make any mistake about
the authorship of the volume, either. Sec
rotary Wilson did not write II himself.
There is nothing to Indicate that the Sec
rotary of Agriculture donned a iat-topped
cap and white apron and frolicked around
with an iron spoon, while the vegetables
were simmering with the I'D exactly three
quarters of the way of the saucepan. 1t is
possible that Director True of the bureau
of experiment stations, under whose aus
pices the book was Issued, did rev or
these things. Or he may have merely
served up the vegetables while they were
sampled by the secretary In his private Of
flee.
Blu. the real literary work on the vol
ume was done by Miss Maria Parloa, who
is officially endorsed expert in al
stages of vegetable culture and prepara-
ton. Miss Parloa gives whole lot OF
useful information too, aside from the facts
about carbohydrates and the receipts afore-
said She says that vegetables, to be good.
ought to be good. that they are not fresh
when they are stale, and that IL you will
mix q solution OF salt vinegar and water
and put lettuce and cabbage in it. head
down. the bugs and worms will crawl out.
Without being intimately acquainted with
the habits OF lettuce bugs, IL would appear
to the average man t1at any sell-EtsPeSlns
bug would crawl out of @ solution OF that
sort IL he could.
There is not word in the book about
how long prime roast beef will keep after
tia can is opened or how to make fifty
seven varieties of potted chicken out OF one
brand OF sheep Nor Is there any direction
for utilizing the leftover fragments OF
veal loaf, o. how to make knuckle bones
of ham and strings from bacon sides look
like boneless turkey. But the volume Is
con fessediy dealing only with vegetables
and their preparation, and II Is possible
that the Secretary of Agriculture win soon
treatise on medico-legal Independence, tell
ing the best antidetes Tor packing house
products. But this IL q matter OF the
future.