THE’REAL, HOME-.KEEPER

Boiled Ham

Select a medium sized ham; soak over night in cold water. Clean and wipe;
cover with cold water; bring to the boiling point, and then simmer until tender,
allowing thirty minutes to the pound. Cool in water in which it was cooked.
Take off the skin, sprinkle with sugar, and cover with seasoned cracker crumbs.
Bake twenty to thirty minutes. Decorate with cloves, garnish with parsley
and lemon, and serve hot or cold. A more aromatic flavor is given to the ham if
a bouquet of sweet herbs and one-half cup each of onions, carrots and turnips
are boiled with it. Many baste the ham, when baking, with cider.

Sausages

Buy the best. Pierce several times with skewer. Cook in hot frying pan
in hot oven, fifteen to twenty minutes. Many prefer to cover sausages with
boiling water after piercing and boil twenty minutes, then brown in frying pan
on top of range. Always drain on brown paper before serving. Serve around
a mound of mashed browned potatoes.

Roast Venison

Lard a saddle of venison, sprinkle with salt and pepper, dredge with flour.
Place in dripping pan and baste with melted butter. Allow ten minutes to the
pound for roasting. Serve with Madeira or currant jelly sauce.

COOKING HELPS

Salt toughens meat if added before it is done.
Meat should never be allowed to remain wrapped in paper, it absorbs the juice.

When grease becomes too hard, grate it and put it away in covered bottles; it
is useful for macaroni.

A recent addition to the list of savory salts is onion salt, which is now put up
in shaker cans or bottles for flavoring use.

Celery should be allowed to lie in cold water, to which a little salt has been
added, for an hour before it is required for the table. This will make it very crisp.

Take bread scraps before they have become musty and dry them in the oven.
When thoroughly dry, roll to a powder or put through the food chopper; put into
jars for breading, etc.

To brown flour for gravies and soups, put a few tablespoons of flour evenly in
the bottom of a baker’s pan, over a moderate fire, stir until it has become a fine
amber brown. Bottle and keep for use.

If you value your own and your family’s digestion, don’t serve tea with fish,
the tannic acid hardens the fibre and makes it indigestible. It should not be
offered with any form of fish, shell-fish or the articulate animals like lobster and
crabs. Iced tea and soft shell crabs are a combination that should be avoided.

A Hoosier Cabinet means one-third less time in the kitchen—See page 91
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