The best meats for children are beefsteak, roast beef, roast lamb, broiled mutton chop, broiled chicken, roast young turkey. Shad, bass, and other delicate white fish may be given to the child between four and twelve years of age. Meats must be cut up fine, and fish must be freed from all bones before it is given to the child. Either meat or fish should be served with the noon meal.
Plate gravy, especially from beef, is nourishing; but thickened gravy made from flour and grease or drippings, with milk or stock added, is too rich for the average juvenile stomach.
Ham, bacon, pork, sausage, liver, kidneys, dried and salt meat are to be avoided, and such fish as cod, halibut, and mackerel are altogether too strong for a child until he enters his teens.
White potatoes are a standby for growing children; they may be boiled, baked, or mashed; but no child should be allowed to eat fried potatoes of any sort.
The best vegetables for very young children are peas, asparagus tips, string beans, carrots, squash, spinach, and very young beets. All these vegetables must be well cooked to be easily digested. Baked sweet potatoes, which children like very much, cauliflower, onions, and turnips may be permitted at rare intervals; but, even with a child in good health, they should not be served until he is six or seven years old.
A very good combination for children is carrots and peas. The carrots are first boiled in salted water until tender; then canned or fresh peas are added; and, finally, milk which may be thickened slightly with flour and butter rubbed smooth.
Salads, which are considered so important in the diet of grown-ups, should not be given to children until they have passed the tenth year.
Well-made soup is important in the child’s diet. Mutton and chicken broths should be the foundation for most of these soups. After the meat has been strained out, the broth may be thickened with rice, barley, or a little cornstarch or flour. Tomato soup should not be given to very young children; but purées made of peas, spinach, celery, or asparagus, rubbed through a sieve, may be given to children seven years old or more.
In preparing cereals for children, bear in mind that the coarser cereals are the more nourishing. The ready-to-serve cereals do not give out the strength which the old-fashioned food-stuffs do. Oatmeal, cracked wheat, rice, or hominy should be cooked in a double-boiler for hours; and even those cereals which are advertised as “prepared” or partly cooked should be recooked thoroughly, and well salted, and be served with top milk, or cream and milk, or a little butter.
No child should be given hot breads of any kind, griddlecakes, shortcake, nor even newly made bread. Homemade zwieback is the best possible bread-stuff to offer children; next to that stale bread cut thin and dried in the oven until it is crisp. Cornbread, split and toasted or dried until crisp, is very desirable as a luncheon and supper dish. Oatmeal, graham, or gluten crackers are better than plain white wheat crackers.