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Some Kitchen Kinks: Baked
Baked apples.
Sugar cookies.
Cocoa.
MENU No. 2.
Cheese fondue.
Toast, zwieback, or thin and crisp baking-powder biscuit.
Celery.
Fruit salad with crisp cookies or meringues.
Clear soup.
MENU NO. 3.
Baked eggs with cheese or Boston roast.
Baked potatoes.
Lettuce salad.
A sweet jelly, crab apple or quince for example, or a preserve.
Rye bread.
Orange or banana shortcake.
Tea.
These bills of fare should be taken as suggestive merely and not as a solution of the problem. In fact, the whole art of making bills of fare needs developing. There is abundant evidence that overeating, where it exists, is frequently due to the fact that meals are not skillfully planned.
People often continue eating after they have taken enough in total bulk because they have not had all they want of some particular kind of food.
The meal has contained too large a percentage of proteid or too much starch; has been too moist or too dry; too highly flavored or not sufficiently flavored. Bill-of-fare making calls not only for knowledge of food values but also for skill in combining flavors and textures.
In this discussion of menu making, and of the use of cheese as an integral part of the diet, the aim has been to suggest ways of using cheese to add to the palatability of meals made up of usual dishes, and to suggest dishes containing cheese which could serve as substitutes for meat dishes when so desired, and also for dishes of many sorts to be used as taste suggests and in which the nutritive value as well as the flavor is increased by the addition of cheese. If cheese is used and in quantity, it is obvious that some other proteid and fat foods should be diminished, in order that the meal or day's menu may not be unduly hearty.
For the convenience of the housekeeper, a number of recipes for cheese dishes are given in later pages, these being preceded by directions for making cottage cheese and other similar cheeses which are usually made in the home.
Homemade Cheese.
Even as late as a generation or two ago cheese of different kinds was made at home for family use, as sour-milk or cottage cheese still is, and cheese making was very generally a farm industry, cheese like butter, being sold by the farmer who made it. Cottage cheese is very commonly homemade. Most types of cheese, however, are now as a rule made on a large scale in factories where advantage may be taken of labor-saving devices.
Curds and Whey.
Cheese curds and whey, an oldfashioned dish, which is often spoken of in accounts of life in earlier times, sometimes refers to sour-milk curds and sometimes to curd separated with rennet. This dish when made with rennet is much like junket and though far less common to-day than was once the case is wholesome and palatable.
Cottage Cheese.
This cheese is very commonly prepared in the home, and the process of making it is very simple. It consists merely of curdling the milk, separating the curd from the whey, seasoning, and pressing it.
The curd is formed by the souring of the milk, and the process is hastened if the milk is kept warm, the best temperature being about blood heat, 96° F. A temperature much above this should be avoided, as the curd is likely to become hard and tough if much heated. The danger is usually not that the whole will be overheated but that the portion nearest the fire will be, In the oldfashioned kitchen there was usually a place where the milk could stand till it was uniformly warm throughout.
With our present cooking arrangements it is often desirable to hasten the process. This may be done by setting the milk into a pan of warm water or by pouring hot water directly into the milk itself. The effect of the latter method is to remove much more of the acid than when the whey is left undiluteà.
Some consider this a great advantage.
If, for any reason, the curd is overheated, it should be put through a meat chopper. This will insure cottage cheese of excellent texture.
If the milk is thoroughly chilled before the whey is drained off it retains more of the fat than if this is done when warm. Under no circumstances, however, is much of the fat retained in cottage cheese. It is therefore more economical to make it out of skim milk and to add the fat to the curd in the form of butter or cream.
Chopped parsley, caraway seeds, chopped olives, and pimiento may all be used for flavoring if such flavored cheese is preferred to plain cottage cheese.
Cottage cheese is most commonly consumed immediately, but if made in quantity for commercial purposes, it may be packed in tubs and placed in cold storage. Sometimes it is formed into rolls or blocks and wrapped in tinfoil when marketed. Such cheese is used without ripening.
Though cottage cheese is usually made by allowing the milk to sour naturally, it is sometimes more convenient to curdle the milk by adding rennet, and some housekeepers have a preference for cottage cheese thus made, since the flavor is milder and the acid taste which it possesses when made from sour milk is lacking.
Sour-Cream Cheese.
When cream is to be made into cheese similar to cottage cheese, it APPENDIX should be drained without having previously been heated. The drainage is facilitated by moistening the cloth in salt water before the cream is poured in. The curd is formed either by souring or by the addition of rennet.