584 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



conditions: It must have an outside coat capable of holding 

 in the steam and it must contain enough water to cook the 

 starch and soften the cellulose which is present. In baking, 

 while we are applying the heat in a so-called dry form or by 

 means of the hot air which comes in contact with the material 

 being baked, we really are applying moist heat to the interior 

 of the vegetable, because the moisture" must be present in the 

 material itself and there must be some means of keeping it in. 



This is really the basis of the much-talked-of paper bag 

 cookery which was advocated as being especially advantageous 

 for use in cooking vegetables. Here the bag is used as a sub- 

 stitute for the outside steam-retaining cover and, in case there 

 is not sufficient water present in the vegetable itself, we are 

 able to add more before starting it to cook. In this way the 

 paper bag shell has an advantage over the potato peel or the 

 apple skin, for in these two latter cases we cannot so easily 

 control the amount of water present. We can see the basis 

 for the extravagant claims made for paper-bag cookery. No 

 material is lost and the volatile flavors are preserved. 



Another form of cooking which has all the advantages of 

 the paper bags and lacks some of its disadvantages is casserole 

 cookery. In this the earthenware casserole takes the place of 

 the paper bag. While as now made not as steam-proof as the 

 paper bag, they could be made even more so, and even now 

 they hold in sufficient amount of the volatile products for all 

 practical purposes. A great advantage of the casserole is that 

 the material is served in the dish in which it is prepared, thereby 

 insuring that it will be kept warmer than is the case when the 

 material must be transferred from a paper bag to a dish, which 

 in many cases is completely cold and in no case would be heated 

 up to the temperature of the material which is being served. 

 Further, the construction of the casserole is such that it keeps 

 in the largest possible amount of heat, and in this case, as in 

 the case of the paper bag, there is only one dish to be washed. 



Frying has not been considered as a method of cooking 

 vegetables because in so few cases do we use it as the original 

 means of preparing them. It is much more frequently used 

 as a method of utilizing left-over vegetables. It might be well 

 here to define what is meant by frying. By frying we mean 

 using fat as a means of conducting heat to the food material. 

 In order that this heat should penetrate from all sides it is 

 necessary that the fat be deep enough to cover the food com- 



