366 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



sary furniture for the use of heat. Fuel and water must not 

 be forgotten. The closets and pantry must be supplied 

 with animal and vegetable foods, sugar, salt, soda, bitartrate 

 of potassa, soap and condiments. Cooking cannot be skil- 

 fully performed without suitable materials and conveniences. 



The cook should be a cheerful, happy person, of quick 

 perception and good common-sense, active, patient, econom- 

 ical, very neat, and fairly good-looking. 



Meats are cooked by boiling, baking, roasting, broiling 

 or frying. Corned beef is boiled, salt pork is boiled or 

 fried. Boiling of meat coagulates the albumen, dissolves 

 the salts and extractives, softens and loosens the fibres, and 

 prepares it for easy mastication and digestion. 



If the object is to secure rich soups and broths, the meat 

 should be cut into small pieces, put into cold water, soaked 

 a short time, and cooked slowly — simmered, not boiled. 

 By this process the meat loses about thirty per cent, of its 

 weight, which is retained in the broth, the remaining meat 

 is rich in albuminoids. Meats long boiled become shriv- 

 elled, shrunken, hard and indigestible. When tho object of 

 cooking is to retain in the meat all the flavo" an<l nutritive 

 properties, the piece should be large and the water boiling 

 hot when the meat is put in, which immediately coagulates 

 the surface albumen and prevents the escape of the internal 

 juices. After boiling a few minutes the temperature should 

 be reduced to 160^ or 170°, and the cooking continued until 

 the meat is tender. It is a wrong practice to give meat a 

 long boiling ; it should have a long stewinir. 



Roasting should commence with a high temperature, to 

 quickly coagulate the surface albumen and retain the rich 

 juices and soluble extractives. By this process the fats arc 

 cooked, fatty acids set free, and the meat rendered savory 

 and palatable. Broiling over hot coals is similar in effect to 

 roasting. Baking in a close oven retains in the meat the 

 empyreumatic products arising from the cooked fats, ren- 

 dering it richer and stronger for the stomach than by any 

 other process of cooking. ])ut it is not so digestible. 



The frying-pan, the terror of the dyspeptic, but the dear, 

 good friend of a lazy, incompetent cook, must be noticed. 

 In the frying-pan the meat is cooked in boiling fat or oil, 



