STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 57 



ful of soda. One-half of the teaspoonful of soda is for the sour 

 milk and one-half for the cream of tartar. One-half a teaspoon- 

 ful of soda is enough for a cup of ordinary sour milk. Butter can 

 either be melted and put in or can be used without. I do this 

 work before cutting the apples because they are apt to discolor 

 before they can be used. I use a tablespoonful of butter in mak- 

 ing a pint of flour into biscuit. The quantity of butter must 

 depend upon the liquid used for mixing. When we use water we 

 require more shortening than when vve use milk. 



One of the first lessons in our school is the baking of an apple. 

 The very first lesson of all is building a fire, because no cooking is 

 possible without fire. We find the children are interested and try 

 to cook things at home and report to us their successes or failures. 

 A perfect apple is best baked whole but an imperfect apple is bet- 

 ter cored and the place where the core was filled with sugar, or 

 spice or jelly or something of that sort. The children take turns 

 in watching the apples and tending them while baking and thus 

 have a great interest in the work. 



This is pastry flour, I prefer it for cooking anything of this sort. 

 The bread flour is better where yeast is used. If I was using the 

 bread flour in this case I would use a scant measure, a smaller 

 quantity. The different amount of liquid depends upon the flour. 

 If we use as much liquid as flour we have a batter ; one-half as 

 much, a stiff batter ; one- third as much ; a soft dough, and one-fourth 

 is for pastry. In putting in the butter it should be softened and 

 not heated hot as it would injure the quality of the baking powder 

 if we used hot butter. The gas escapes much quicker when you 

 pour hot water over it than it does when you pour cold water over 

 it. I will fill the^ apples for three dumplings with jelly made from 

 apple parings. I then take the apple and place it, in the centre of 

 the dough 1 have rolled out and fold the dough around it and place 

 it in this little cup. I place this in the kettle containing boiling 

 water, taking care that the water only reaches a little mare than 

 half way up the sides of the cups. 



In making dumplings for stews no shortening is put in because 

 the meat gives suflBcient shortening. In stews the water should 

 be rapidly boiling when the dumplings are put in, and should not 

 stop boiling until the dumplings are taken out. We make the 

 douoh thinner for a stew and make .the dumplings by dropping 

 them from a spoon. I find that there area great many of our 



