790 Reading-Course for Farmers' Wives. 



In cooking dried peas and beans or vegetables which have become 

 old and tough, or if the water is hard, a pinch of soda the size of a pea 

 to each quart of water will aid in softening the cellulose and shorten 

 the time of cooking. 



In preparing vegetables, as little should be wasted as possible. One 

 excellent reason for baking potatoes or cooking them with their jackets 

 on is the lessened loss in preparation. 



The simplest methods of preparation are best and a well-cooked 

 vegetable, seasoned with a little salt and pepper and butter, or milk 

 and butter, may be more delicious than most of the more elaborately 

 prepared dishes. 



PROTEIN FOODS 



When an egg or a piece of meat is dropped into boiling water, it hardens 

 and shrinks somewhat. If the egg is cooked in smoking hot fat which 

 is considerably hotter than boiling water, it shrinks more and becomes 

 still harder. If cooked long enough in the hot fat it becomes like a 

 piece of leather. It is the presence of the substance known as proteid 

 in these foods which causes this change. Starch takes up water in cook- 

 ing and becomes soft and paste-like and more digestible, but proteid 

 gives off water and becomes firm or hard and less digestible. 



Proteid foods such as milk, eggs, cheese and meat, contain no starch 

 and in general do not need cooking to make them more digestible. In 

 fact, they may be more easily digested raw than cooked, hence the 

 reason for cooking them is not to improve digestibility. Meat and milk 

 often contain dangerous parasites and are then cooked as a means of 

 removing these harmful organisms. Meat and eggs are cooked to make 

 them taste better. Few persons relish the flavor of raw meat or a raw 

 egg, though these may be perfectly digestible. Poor cooking of such 

 proteid foods as eggs and meat may change them from foods easily 

 digested in a raw state to foods difficult to digest. 



Some of our vegetable foods, as peas and beans and some cereals, 

 are relatively rich in proteid but contain also large amounts of starchy 

 substances. These we must cook therefore as for starchy foods, and 

 have considered them under that head. 



Since there are very good reasons for not eating raw even most of 

 those proteid foods which contain no starch, it is highly desirable to 

 learn how to prepare them in such a way as to make them palatable 

 and still have them retain as far as possible the natural ease with which 

 they are digested. 



