1871. 



NEW ENGLAND FARTilER. 



347 



cooling, non-vivacious beverages. While in "mixed 

 drinks," containing some form of spirit, we pro- 

 Imlily take the lead of the world, our temperance 

 tipplers show a strange poverty of invention. The 

 only habitual sherliet is lemonade, the least delicate 

 of them all, and moreover containing an acid 

 which disagrees with many persons, brangeade, 

 so much superior to it, is rarely seen ; raspberry 

 and strawberry sherbets never. The clitnculty of 

 obtaining these fruits except during a very short 

 season may have something to vlo with the want ; 

 but then "there is orgeat, the most cooling and 

 healthy of summer drinks; who drinks orgeat? 

 in how many American towns can 3'ou get it ? 

 Simpler than all is eau sucree. We laugh at the 

 French for drinking eau sucree, and think it must 

 be insipid, but French sugared water is not insipid ; 

 it is redeemed from that quality by the judicious 

 insertion of live or six drops of orange-tlower 

 water. The swells of the Grand Opera and the 

 Italians used to take it regularly between the acts, 

 instead of heating their brains with cocktails, or 

 tilling their stomachs with superfluous gasand 

 spoiling their digestions through the medium of, 

 syrup and artificial minfral water. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OP FRYING 



The object of all cooking is to bring about those 

 chemiciil changes in the articles of food which 

 nature everywhere produces, in vegetable and ani- 

 mal substances, when exposed to the influence of 

 heat. Baking, frying, boiling, or roasting are all 

 only so many different methods of applying heat. 

 The commonest, the most convenient, the cheapest, 

 and quickest of these methods is frying, which can 

 be applied to almost all articles of food, which re- 

 quires the least apparatus and the smallest fire; 

 yet of all methods it is the least one understood, 

 the one which destroys most food, and is the cause 

 of more indigestion and dyspepsia than all the 

 other methods combined. The reason of this is 

 that in many substances the admixture of fat pre- 

 vents the chemical processes of cooking from hav- 

 ing their proper development. The perfection of 

 frying would l)e to have the food fried without 

 coming into contact with the fat at all. But as this 

 is, of course, a self-evident impossibility, the next 

 best thing is to have the food come into contact 

 with thelat as little as possil)le. This is accom- 

 plished simply by having the fat hot. Grease of any 

 description is capable of being heated to a very 

 much higher temperature than water, in fact it can 

 be made almost three times as hot as boiling water. 

 When fat is at its lioiling point it is so hot that any 

 article of food brought into contact with it is 

 actually bniTit, and this is precisely the reason why, 

 for purposes of frying, fat should always '^? boil- 

 ing hot. For any article of food, a doughnut, 

 for example, dipped into boiling fat is immediately 

 covered all over by a thin crust of bunit doughnut, 

 v.-hich prevents the fat from penetrating further in, 

 and enables the rest of the doughnut to be exposed 

 to a greater degree of heat than can be applied to 

 it by any other process, without coming in contact 

 with the fat, and the natural chemical processes 

 go on inside with a greater vivacity and to a greater 

 degi'ce of perfection than can be obtained b)' any 

 otiier method. Perfect frying is the perfection of 

 cooking, but so soon as the fat is not sufficiently 

 hot to create the burnt cnist around the article 

 fried, then the fat penetrates it and absolute- 

 ly prevents cooking from taking place at all. If 

 the fat is not boiling, bubbling hot, the process that 

 takes place is not cooking, but simplj' drenching 

 the food with a tepid fat, and rendering it totally 

 indigestible. It makes no difference how hot the fat 

 is made afterwai-d, the mischief is done the moment 

 the fat penetrates inside. All perfectly fried food 



has a thin, crisp, bro\\Ti outside crust, which has 

 in itself a pleasant, relishing taste,) and is perfectly 

 free from even the suspicion of fiit inside, except 

 what was intentionally put there by the cook. All 

 housekeei)ers kno.w that to fiy well their fat should 

 be hot. But they do not attend to it half as scru- 

 pulously as they would if they understood the true 

 philosophy of it. Boiling, bubbling, hot fat can- 

 not penetrate anything, and cooks to perfection, 

 tepid fiit penetrates everywhere and does not cook 

 at all, but actuallj" prevents cooking. Any house- 

 keeper who reads this, and chooses to profit by it, 

 need never put any greasy, fried, half-cooked and 

 indigestible food upon her table. The whole secret 

 consists in having the fat lolling hot before the 

 things are jmt in. There is one other condition 

 which follows naturally from this first one, but 

 which is almost invariably lost sight of even by 

 good cooks, and that is that the fat should entirely 

 cover the article to be fried. The reasrin of this 

 is, that the part not at once covered by the fat 

 remains cold, cools off the fat near it, and then 

 absorbs the tepid fi^t just the same as if it had 

 never been hot. Frying pans should be deep, well 

 filled, and heated to the boiling point, and tlien it 

 is easy to turn out fried food crisp, brown, and dry 

 on the outside, and perfectly soft, moist, and well 

 cooked within. It is a peculiarity of the outside 

 crust of things fried in boiling fat that the fiit itself 

 drips off from it as readil}' as water; hence, well 

 fried articles are neither greasy in appearance, nor 

 very greasy in reality. Frying ought to be as easy 

 as boiling. — Christian Union, 



Idle Girls. — It is a painful spectacle in families 

 where the mother is the drudge, to see the daughters, 

 elegantly dressed, reclining at their ease with their 

 drawing, their reading, beguiling themselves of 

 the lapse of hours, days and weeks, and never 

 dreaming of their responsibilities, but, as a neces- 

 sarj' consequence of neglect of duty, growing 

 wearj' of their useless lives, laying hold of every 

 newly invented stimulant to rouse their drooping 

 energies, and blaming their fate, when they dai-e 

 not blame their God, for having placed them where 

 they are. These individuals will often tell j-ou, 

 with an air of affected compassion, (for who can 

 believe it real,) that poor, dear mamma is working 

 herself to death ; yet no sooner do you propose 

 that they should assist her than they declare she is 

 quite in her element; in short , that she never 

 would be happy if she had only half so much to 

 do. 



CODE OP DRESS. 



The writer of "Home and Society" in Scribnefs 

 Monthly for June, among other things, gives this 

 code of dress : 



This code, worthy to be engraved on tables of 

 dress, runs somewhat after this wise : 



Imprimis. The first instinct about a new fashion 

 is the true one. Don't wait till your e^'c has lost 

 its accuracy and your judgement its z(\(^q. Sub- 

 ject the thing at once to the general rule, and bow 

 to the decision. 



2d. What suits one person does not suit another. 

 Know thyself. 



3d. Dress should supplement good points and 

 correct bad ones. Thick and thin, long and short, 

 are not all to be subjected to one Procrustean 

 style. 



4th. Colors should be harmonious, should be 

 massed, should be becoming. Id est, many little 

 points or blotches of color sprinkled over acostume 

 produce a disagreeably pied and speckled effect, as 

 of a monstrous robin's egg, or a plum-pudding. 

 One tint should prevail, relieved by a contrasting 

 tint. No amount of fashionable prestige can en- 



