Page:The Boston cooking-school cook book (1910).djvu/50

 How to Combine Ingredients

Next to measuring comes care in combining,—a fact not always recognized by the inexperienced. Three ways are considered,—stirring, beating, and cutting and folding.

To stir, mix by using circular motion, widening the circles until all is blended. Stirring is the motion ordinarily employed in all cookery, alone or in combination with beating.

To beat, turn ingredient or ingredients over and over, continually bringing the under part to the surface, thus allowing the utensil used for beating to be constantly brought in contact with bottom of the dish and throughout the mixture.

To cut and fold, introduce one ingredient into another ingredient or mixture by two motions: with a spoon, a repeated vertical downward motion, known as cutting; and a turning over and over of mixture, allowing bowl of spoon each time to come in contact with bottom of dish, is called folding. These repeated motions are alternated until thorough blending is accomplished.

By stirring, ingredients are mixed; by beating, a large amount of air is inclosed; by cutting and folding, air already introduced is prevented from escaping.

Ways of Preserving

1. By Freezing. Foods which spoil readily are frozen for transportation, and must be kept packed in ice until used. Examples: Fish and poultry.

2. By Refrigeration. Foods so preserved are kept in cold storage. The cooling is accomplished by means of ice, or by a machine where compressed gas is cooled and then permitted to expand. Examples: meat, milk, butter, eggs, etc.

3. By Canning. Which is preserving in air-tight glass jars, or tin cans hermetically sealed. When fruit is canned, sugar is usually added.

4. By Sugar. Examples: fruit-juices and condensed milk.

5. By Exclusion of Air. Foods are preserved by ex