Be careful that the fat or oil is fresh, clean, and free from salt, else what you fry in it will be of bad color and flavor; salt will prevent it from browning.

Fat or oil, to be used again, should be strained through a sieve before it is set aside.

Fat becomes richer from having meat fried in it, and may be used repeatedly; but the fat that has been used for fish cannot be used again for meat.

To prepare crumbs for frying, dry thoroughly in a warm oven, or before the fire, any waste pieces of bread; then pound them in a mortar and sift them, and put them away till wanted. This is much better than grating bread as it is needed, or using oatmeal, etc.

When you wish fried things to look as well as possible, do them twice over with egg and crumbs.

If eggs be very dear, a little flour and water may be substituted for them in preparing fish to fry.

In frying use a slice to lift the articles in and out of the pan, and drain them.

To make batter for frying: melt two ounces of butter in a little warm water, and pour it upon half-a-pound of flour; stir it and add water enough to form a batter, thick enough to adhere to whatever is put into it; but it should run freely: add some salt and the beaten whites of two eggs.

A small shallow frying-pan, or saute-pan, as it is called, is very useful to fry articles to be stewed: this method differs from common frying, as it only requires butter enough to keep the article from sticking to the pan and burning.

The fire for frying should be free from smoky coals, sharp, and even. Charcoal makes the best frying fire.

The fat should be carefully drained from all fried articles; indeed, they should be so dry as scarcely to soil a cloth. Fish is best drained by wrapping it in soft whitey-brown paper, by which it will so dry as not to soil the napkin upon which it is served.

The great secret in frying is to know when the fat is of a proper heat. Put nothing in till it has done hissing, and is still. Or throw a small bit of bread into the pan; if it fries crisp, the fat is ready; if it burns, too hot. Whatever is fried in fat not heated enough, will be pale and sodden. Fish should be crisp and dry in a few minutes after it is out of the pan; when it is not so, dry it on a cloth before the fire.

Baking

Baking is a very common and convenient mode of dressing a dinner in small families, and much used in these United States. The southern cook will often stand in the midst of a circle of portable ovens, placed on the brick floor of the kitchen, which is usually at some distance from the dwelling-house.

Legs of mutton and pork, fillets of veal, and many other joints, will bake nicely if inclined to be fat; if lean, they will not taste well, but will shrivel up and lose much in weight.

A pig, geese and ducks, a buttock, leg or shin of beef, a ham, oxcheek, and various kinds of fish, make very nice baked dishes. The oven in preparing all kinds of bread and farinaceous food, is indispensable.

Stewing

All articles to be stewed should first be boiled gently, then skimmed and set aside in an even heat: on this account, charcoal makes the best fire for stewing.

All stews, or meat dressed a second time, should be only simmered, as the meat should only be made hot through.

A stewpan is the most advantageous vessel in which stews, hashes, soups, or gravies, can be made; indeed, for all purposes of boiling, a stewpan is preferable to a deep saucepan, as, in the former, the articles are exposed to more even heat than when they are placed one above another in the saucepan, and are likely to be broken in stirring.

The best stewpans are made of copper or iron; they should be kept covered as much as possible, unless you wish to reduce the gravy.

Be careful not to fry in a stewpan; or if so, with great care, and sufficient butter to save the tinning from melting.

Most of the directions for making soups and gravies apply also to this branch of cookery.

Poeling

Put into a stewpan with two pounds of veal, a pound of beef suet, one of butter, one of very fat bacon, all cut up; fry them till the veal becomes white; put in three pints of boiling water, a handful of salt, a few sprigs of thyme, a bay leaf, an onion stuck with cloves, and a bundle of parsley and green onions. Boil the whole gently till the onion is done, strain it through a sieve, and set it by for use. I cele will keep for a week, and will give relish and whiteness to everything boiled in it. Do not boil any lean of bacon; it will give a red color from the saltpetre. Meat in poeling must be under-done.

Larding

Have ready larding-pins of different sizes, according to the article to be done; cut slices of bacon into bits of a proper length, quite smooth, and put on a larding-needle to suit it, with which pierce the skin and a very little of the meat, leaving the bacon in, and the two ends of equal length outwards. Lard in rows the size you think fit.

The same effect with regard to flavor, may be produced by raising the skin and laying a slice of fat bacon beneath it.

Doubing consists in passing bacon through meat, while larding is on the surface only.

Glazing is done by brushing melted glaze or jelly over the article, and letting it cool; in some cases it is requisite to cover the articles with two or three coats of glaze, allowing each to cool as it is laid on. The glaze should be of a clear yellow brown, and as thick as good treacle.

If you have not the glaze ready, sift a little sugar over the article to be glazed, and finish in the oven, with a salamander, or red hot shovel.

Blanching makes the article plump and white, and consists in putting it into cold water over the fire, allowing it to boil up, and then plunging it into cold water, where the article should remain until quite cold.

Danger From Copper Saucepans

The precise danger from the use of copper saucepans, or stewpans, imperfectly tinned. is hardly understood. It appears that the acid contained in stews and other made dishes, as lemon-juice, though it does not dissolve copper by being merely boiled in it a few minutes, nevertheless, if allowed to cool and stand in it for some time, will acquire poisonous matter, as verdigris, in the form of a green band, or crust, inside the vessel. It has likewise been proved that weak solutions of common salt, such as are daily made by adding a little salt to boiling vegetables, fish, or meat, act powerfully on copper vessels, although strong solutions or brine would not affect them.

It is, however, in vain to hope that cooks will attend to the nice distinctions by which copper stewpans may be rendered safe; the general advice given by prudent physicians is, therefore, against their use at all.

The kettles in which the soups are made should be well tinned, and kept particularly clean, by being washed in hot water and rubbed dry before they are put away. If they are not kept well tinned, the taste as well as the color of the soup will be liable to be affected by the iron; and if the soup-kettle be made of copper, and the tinning not quite perfect, everything cooked in it will be more or less poisonous, as everything which is sweet, salt, or sour, extracts verdigris from copper.

Boning, besides its other advantages, is particularly recommended, on account of its economy: the bones of turkeys, fowls, hares, etc, assisting to make gravy, while they are nearly useless when left in the bodies of the animals a boned fowl also, rendered solid by stuffing, will go much further than when dressed in the common way. Hares should always be boned, for the sake of the improvement in their appearance, and being so much more easily carved. In the hiring of a cook by persons resident in the country, it is therefore essential to ascertain whether she is mistress of that art; for as to teaching her by printed directions, it would be time thrown away and she can only acquire it by practice; but it may be learned by a few lessons from the poulterer.

Napkin Rings.