The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-01-15
FIRST PRINCIPLES
By MRS. CHRISTINE FREDERICK,
 Household Efficiency Expert

By MRS. CHRISTINE FREDERICK,
 Household Efficiency Expert
 Copyright, 1924 (New York Evening
 World), Press Publishing Company.
 Quite frequently in my mail some
 one writes. Please send me recipe
 for creamed crab." or some other 'creamed dish. Now. what surprises me is to think that If a woman knows one dish with a cream sauce. why she doesn't know hundred! For there is no difference between creamed crab, creamed cabbage or creamed anything else if you know funda- mental recipe. And this, after all. Is the best way to learn all cooking-to become adept at master recipe" 1 for one special process and then vary | 1t as you like.
 There Is absolutely no sense in cook l cooks offering us dozens of distinct directions for dishes which are really | same recipe. Why apple fritters. ba- mana fritters. corn fritters and so on | page after page, when just one basic | fritter recipe is all we need? surely | the new or young housekeeper be- cones confused at the repetitions and cook book. Would 1t not be better to firmly fix in her mind the one l simple. and, as we might say. mas l ter recipe" for each process and then
 let her adapt and vary 1t as she l chooses?
 For example. take this invariable white cream sauce. It Is always
 flour, butter and liquid in the a1- most unvarying proportion of two | tablespoons of flour and butter to one cup of liquid. If we combine and blend them once, then we instantly have at our fingers ends dozens, yes.
 be "crean.ed." or have a white sauce without any separate or distinct rec- l ipes for each. How simple cooking at once becomes if we follow this idea.
 Similarly if we can make one dumpling in the proportion of two cups flour, four tablespoons baking powder and one cup liquid, can we not make 20 different variations by add ing little more sugar, few raisins,
 or combining now with meat and again with fruit? To be surel And whoecan make batch of dumplings i can so vary her menu as to greatly | increase its heat giving and stay 1 ing" value. A simple pot roast be- | con.es more hearty with dumplingS cooked over 1t the last 20 minutes; an l OLnerWlS0SCduby CaH tS l1ldUc
 more filling by steamed dumpling
 eaten with a canned fruit sauce. | Again, biscuits Is biscuits" and if we are skilled in combining flour.
 baking powder and liquid for dump | lings, why, presto, we can make tea
 biscuits from the Identical directions | by baking the cut out discs instead | of steaming then over hot water! Or by making the dough much sweeter and adding nuts, bits of orange peel and sprinkling with cinnamon, the identical dough again becomes a cof- fee cake!
 So, too, if the young bride knows | one cake, who can say the limits of the variations she may achieve by al- tering the filling, the icing, baking in a single loaf or in layers? Just as the critics hold that there are only l 19 original plots in all fiction ds this the right numbero, which have been worked over into romance and drama | for countless centuries, so, too, I say that there are probably not more than a double dozen of master recipes" in the whole realm of cook cry. Whoever learns these first principles"-or plots, shall we say?- can then command countless "situa- tions" which turn upon a more gener- | ous spoon of butter. a heavier hand with the sugar, or indeed on so little a thing as an increased sprinkling or spicei
 In the future the new way of teach ing cooking will certainly be along l these lines. The poor head of the novice In housewifery will not be tor mented by learning creamed this or creamed that, but once having grasped "creamed'' in general, she may proceed to cream everything In | the universe to her hearts delight. And once having caught the knack of a simple salad dressing. she will not need whole book to tell her how to add a few drops of onionjuice or 1 a tablespoon of catsup.
 The housewife who wants to in-
 crease her culinary skill can do noth- ing better than to get down to first principles, learn fundamentals of
 cooking processes and let the varia- tions come as they will,