Mixing Ingredients one at a time if you have ever seen a druggist compound a prescription you noticed that he did not put in two or three things to mix at one time with what he had in his mortar, but blended each ingredient with what he was making before he added another. The same rule has fine results in cooking. If you have three or four or five ingredients, do not mix them all at once, but stir two together, then add the third, then the fourth, then the fifth, stirring each time.

The Beneficent Pan Of Hot Water

A pan of hot water set in the upper oven evens the baking. If the oven becomes overheated, the pan filled with cold water reduces the temperature in the best possible way. In cooking canned vegetables, such as corn, if the saucepan holding the corn is set in a pan of hot water, the moderated heat develops the taste of the corn and also saves constant watching that the corn does not burn. Cereals are best cooked in this way, although we call the equipment a doubleboiler when we use the pan of hot water and saucepan for such grains. Finally, a pan of hot water is ever ready for making sauces and gravies, and saves the burning both of food and saucepans.

Appearance Of Meats

Good beef is of a bright red color and moderately fat.

Good mutton is deep red and closegrained.

Good pork is closegrained, and the rind is smooth and thin.

How To Make Tough Meat Tender

A tablespoon of vinegar added to the water in which meats or fowls are boiling helps to make the flesh tender.

When Salt Should Be Added In Cooking Meat

To put salt on meat when it is raw makes it hard. Do not salt your meat till it is almost cooked, at the point where it is beginning to get tender.

Advantage of a Variety of Seasonings

A French chef is authority for the statement that the most economical cook is a woman who keeps her pantry lavishly supplied with all sorts of seasonings, both the cheap and the expensive. His argument is that a tough piece of meat, carefully cooked and most alluringly seasoned, may result in a dish of even finer flavor than filet of beef at one dollar a pound. Among the seasonings which it is good to have constantly in stock are bay leaves, whole mace, peppercorns, cloves, allspice, berries, sage, summer savory, thyme, sweet marjoram, cayenne, paprika, Worcestershire sauce, kitchen bouquet, curry, mushroom, tomato and walnut catchup, celery salt, and, I might add, a box of green parsley growing in a sunny window of the kitchen.

This list may sound formidable and expensive to the housewife who places her whole dependence on pepper and salt. Experience will teach her, however, that it is cheap. If the seasonings are put in tightly closed cans, or bottled, they will keep perfectly for almost any length of time. Buy herbs such as sage, bay leaves, etc. in the smallest quantities, and be sure they are fresh. The advantage of having a goodly array of seasonings at hand is that you can find a different flavor for meat dishes every day. A variety may be given to meats which would almost fail to be palatable if they were not excellently seasoned.

How To Dry Herbs

In drying herbs from your garden, do not cut and dry them in the sun. Neither tie them in bunches and hang the bunches up under cover. In the first instance, you dry out the herb's peculiar oil or virtue. By the second method, the leaves discolor by their own dampness, mold, or fermentation.

The right way in drying herbs for your kitchen and possible medicinal use is to gather them as soon as they begin to open their flowers. and to lay them on some netting in a dry shed or room where the air will get at them on all sides. Be sure they are dry and not moist when you cut or pick them, and free them from dirt and decayed leaves. After they are entirely dried out, put them in paper bags upon which you have written the name of the herb and the date of toeing it up. Hang them where the air is dry and there is no chance of their molding.

Powders of Savory Herbs

Strip the leaves from the stalks, pound, sift out the coarse pieces, put the powder in bottles, and cork tight. Label with exactness every bottle. If, for the convenience of instant use in gravies, soups, etc., you wish different herbs mixed, pound the leaves together when you make them into powders. Celery seed, dried lemonpeel, and other spicy things can thus be combined and ready for the moment's call.

About Pepper

Of peppers, the white and cayenne are thought the most harmless. In cooking for the sick, or for persons of weak digestion, it is well to leave out the pepper altogether. If, however, you think you must use some kind, take the more harmless white, or cayenne. Black pepper is the dried fruit of an East Indian shrub. White pepper comes from the same plant and is made from the black pepper by taking off the outer scale. It is not so strong as, the black, but has a finer flavor. Cayenne is a preparation from the dried fruit of capsicum, and when pure and taken in slight quantities, a stimulant to digestion. Paprika is a Hungarian red pepper, and is not so strong as the cayenne.

As To Sauces

Every cook should know how to make three or four simple sauces, for nothing adds more to the appetizing qualities of a meat. The French cynic who said that the reason why the English considered it bad form to dip their bread in their sauces was because they had no sauces worth dipping bread into, had a slight foundation for his remark.