AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST 
309 
CORN, RYE, AND INDIAN BREAD. 
VVe have been resolved into a committee 
for a special report on this very important 
branch of the great culinary art, and if our 
readers do not understand and act discreetly 
in reference to it hereafter, it is not our 
fault. 
We profess to speak, in the following pas¬ 
sages, ex cathedra, and if others do not suc¬ 
ceed in their earlier experiments, they must 
try again. 
Corn-Bread as made at Green’s Cham- 
bers-street, N. Y.—Take 7 pints yellow 
corn-meal, 3 pints wheat flour, and mix them 
well together; then 6 eggs, well broken, 2 
cups of melted butter, and a little salt and 
sugar to suit the taste. Put this mass to¬ 
gether, and mix with milk to make a batter 
about the consistency or stiffness of paste 
prepared for drop-cake. Then dissolve three 
teaspoonsful of cream of tartar, and the 
same of soda ; pour it upon the mass, stir it 
thoroughly, and dip it at once into pans, and 
bake in a hot oven. 
Corn-Bread as made at Crook’s Chatham- 
street, N. Y.—Take 1 quart of milk, 3 eggs, 
beaten, butter half the size of an egg, cream 
tartar 1 teaspoonful, salt and sweeten to 
your taste. To this add corn-meal to make 
a paste about the consistency of griddle- 
cakes ; put in pan immediately, and bake in 
a hot oven. 
Boston Brown-Bread. —To make this ar¬ 
ticle, take of best yellow corn-meal two 
parts ; of unbolted rye-meal (the rye should 
be screened before grinding) one part; par¬ 
tially wet and mix the corn-meal with hot 
water, then add the rye and the yeast, (hop- 
yeast, one pint to nine quarts of meal,) and 
thoroughly mix with more warm water, if 
necessary, to make a mass neither hard nor 
soft, but stiff enough to be transferred with 
care by the hand from the kneading trough 
to the pan ; then let it stand till it begins to 
show signs of rising; put it into the pans, and 
let it stand a few minutes, if it is not “rising” 
too fast, then put it to bake ; if in a brick 
oven, six hours will be none too many ; if in 
a common stove or range, care must be had 
not to burn, and bake from three to six hours 
according to size of loaf. The heat should 
be moderate after the first two hours, but 
steady; keep up a scalding heat after the 
outside is browned properly. 
Many people use three quarts or pounds 
of rye-meal to five quarts or pounds of corn- 
meal, which, we think, are the best propor¬ 
tions for pure New-England“ rye and Indian.” 
S. D. Ostrander, Boston brown-bread baker, 
of this city, 378 Bleecker-street, uses 2 parts 
rye to 4 of corn-meal, and hop-yeast, adding 
a little molasses to a part to suit the taste of 
customers. Too much molasses is worse 
than none for most people. 
But we next give the receipt which we 
would set forth as making a better article 
than all the brown-bread ever baked in this 
city of Boston, where, of course, bakers only 
imitate the “real original” article made by 
the housewives of Yankeeland. It will be 
perceived that we still hold on upon milk, 
and though a large proportion of this bread 
is mixed with water only, we go for this 
liquid as a valuable improvement. 
Real New-England Brown-Bread. —Take 
equal proportions of sifted rye and Indian 
meal, mix them well together; add half a 
tea-cup-full of molasses, and two gills of 
good yeast, to about three quarts of the mix¬ 
ed meal. Wet this with good new milk, suf¬ 
ficient to make a dough that can easily be 
worked, even with one hand. For econo¬ 
my’s sake, milk that has stood twelve hours, 
and from which the cream has been taken, 
may be a substitute for the new milk; or 
water which has been pressed from boiled, 
squash, or in which squash has been boiled, 
is a substitute much better than pure water. 
But warm water is more commonly used. 
The ingredients should be thoroughly mixed, 
and stand, in cold weather, for twelve hours ; 
in warm weather two hours may be suffi¬ 
cient before baking. 
If baked in a brick oven, a three-quart 
loaf should stand in the oven all night. The 
same quantity in three baking-pans will 
bake in about three hours. 
Serve this warm from the oven, with good, 
sweet butter, and we could fast upon it every 
morning for breakfast, from January to De¬ 
cember.— Plow, Loom and Anvil. 
COOKERY-EFFECTS OF HEAT UPON MEAT. 
A well-cooked piece of meat should be full 
of its own juice or natural gravy. In roast¬ 
ing, therefore, it should be exposed to a 
quick fire, that the external surface may be 
made to contract at once, and the albumen 
•to coagulate, before the juice has had time 
to escape from within. And so in boiling. 
When a piece of beef or mutton is plunged 
into boiling water, the outer part contracts, 
the albumen which is near the surface coag¬ 
ulates, and the internal juice is prevented 
either from escaping into the water by which 
it is surrounded, or from being diluted or 
weakened by the admission of water among 
it. When cut up, therefore, the meat yields 
much gravy, and is rich in flavor. Hence a 
beefsteak or a mutton-chop is done quickly, 
•and over a quick fire, that the natural juices 
may be retained. On the other hand, if the 
meat be exposed to a slow fire, its pores re¬ 
main open, the juice continues to flow from 
within, as it has dried from the surface, and 
the flesh pines, and becomes dry, hard, and 
unsavory. Or if it be put into cold or tepid 
water which is afterwards gradually brought 
to a boil, much of the albumen is extracted 
before it coagulates, the natural juices for 
the most part flow out, and the meat is 
served in a nearly tasteless state. Hence 
to prepare good boiled meat, it should be put 
at once into water already brought to a boil. 
But to make beef-tea, mutton-broth, and 
other meat soups, the flesh should be' put 
into cold water, and this afterwards very 
slowly warmed, and finally boiled. The ad¬ 
vantage derived from simmering—a term not 
unfrequent in cookery books—depends very 
much upon the effects of slow boiling as 
above explained.— Prof. Johnston’s Chemis¬ 
try of Common Life. 
Corn Cake. —A special premium was 
awarded to Mrs. Chas. \V. Wampole, at the 
late Exhibition of the Montgomery (Ala.) 
Agricultural Society, for a corn cake, made 
after the following recipe : 
“ Take the white of eight eggs ; one-fourth 
pound each of corn-starch, flour and butter ; 
half pound sugar ; one teaspoonful of cream 
tartar ; half a teaspoonful of soda. Flavor 
with almond to suit the taste.” 
- nH H l l'.T Ii l - -—- 
Gold Consumed for Manufacturing Pur¬ 
poses. —It is computed that the amount of 
the precious metals consumed in various 
ways is from forty to fifty millions of dollars’ 
value per annum* It is stated that for gild¬ 
ing metals by the electrotype and the water 
gilding process, no less than 18,000 to 20,000 
ounces are annually required. InParis, 18,- 
000,000 francs are used for manufacturing 
purposes yearly ; and in the United States, 
$10,000,000 is the estimated amount con¬ 
verted into ornametal jewelry. 
Oitr very manner is a thing of importance. 
A kind no is often more agreeable than a 
rough yes. 
MEASURING DISTANCES BY SOUND. 
Sound passes through the air with a mod¬ 
erate and known velocity; light passes al¬ 
most instantaneously. If, then, two distant 
points be visible from each other, and a gun 
be fired at night from one of them, an ob¬ 
server at the other, noting by a stop watch 
the time at which the flash is seen, and then 
at which the report is heard, can tell by the 
number ofintervening seconds how far apart 
the points are, knowing how far sound trav¬ 
els in a second. Sound moves about 1,090 
feet per second in dry air, with the tempera¬ 
ture at the freezing point, 32° Fahrenheit. 
For higher or lower temperatures, add or 
subtract 1’ foot for each degree of Fahren¬ 
heit. If a wind blows with or against the 
movement of the sound, its velocity must be 
added or subtracted. If it blows obliquely, 
the correction will evidently equal its veloci¬ 
ty multiplied by the cosine of the angle which 
the direction of the wind makes with the di¬ 
rection of the sound. A gentle pleasant 
wind has a velocity of 10 feet per second ; a 
brisk gale, 20 feet per second ; a very brisk 
gale, 30 feet; a high wind, 50 feet ; a very 
high wind, 70 feet ; a storm or tempest, 80 
feet; a great storm, 100 feet; a hurricane, 
120 feet; and a violent hurricance, that roots 
up trees, &c., 150 feet per second. If the 
gun be fired at each end of the base in turn, 
and the means of the times taken, the effect 
of the wind will be eliminated. 
If a watch be not at hand, suspend a peb¬ 
ble to a string, (such as a thread drawn from 
a handkerchief,) and count its vibrations. If 
it be 39£ inches long, it will vibrate in one 
second ; if 9 inches long, in half a second &c. 
If its length is unknown at the time, still 
count its vibrations ; measure it subsequent¬ 
ly, and then will the time of its vibration in 
seconds, equal the square root of the string 
divided by 391.— Prof. Gillespie. 
Preservation of Milk. —The following 
method is recommended for the preservation 
of milk, either at sea or in warm climates : 
Provide pint or quart bottles, which must 
be perfectly clean, sweet, and dry ; draw the 
milk from the cow into the bottles, and, as 
they are filled, immediately cork them well 
up, and fasten the corks with pack-thread or 
wire ; then spread a little straw on the bot¬ 
tom of a boiler, on which place the bottles 
with straw between them, until the boiler 
contains a sufficient quantity. Fill it up with 
cold water ; heat the water, and, as soon as it 
begins to boil, draw the fire, and let the whole 
cool gradually. When quite cold, take out 
the bottles and pack them with straw or 
sawdust in hampers, and stow them in the 
coolest part of the ship, or in a cool place. 
Some years since, there was a Swedish or 
Danish vessel at Liverpool, having milk on 
board, preserved in this manner. It had 
been carried twice to the West Indies, and 
back to Denmark, and been above eighteen 
months in the bottles ; nevertheless, it was 
as sweet as when first taken from the cow. 
Method. —All things in us and about us are 
chaos without method; and so long as the 
mind is entirely passive, so long as there is 
an habitual submission of the understanding 
to mere events and images, as such,without 
any attempt to classify and arrange them,so 
long the chaos must continue. There may 
be transition, but there can never be pro¬ 
gress ; there may be sensation, but there 
can not be thought; for the total absence of 
method renders things impracticable ; as we 
think that partial defects of method propor¬ 
tionally render thinking a trouble and a 
fatigue. _ —mm——_ 
He that hath no money needeth no purse. 
