To tell a stale egg, you will see it is more transparent at the thick end when you hold it up to the light.
Fresh eggs are more transparent in the middle. Very bad eggs will float in a pan of water.
Poached Eggs.—Break each egg separately into a cup. When your water is boiling fast, drop in an egg sharply. Use a large deep pan, with salt and vinegar in the water. Lift the egg very carefully in a ladle before it is set too hard. Place the eggs all round a soup plate, pour over them a nice sauce, made with flour and butter, a little milk, and some grated cheese and salt.
Meat.—Examine the meat before you accept it. If you do not know the looks of good meat, you should go to a butcher’s shop and ask him to show you how to know it. Much gristle is a sign of old age. You can easily tell if meat smells disagreeable. Beef should be of a bright red color, and juicy and elastic. The fat should be firm and of a pale straw color. Mutton should feel dryish and the fat look white. All papers must be taken off at once. The feet of fowls should be soft and flexible, not dry, and the skin of the back should not be discolored.
Beef and mutton, when underdone, are more easily digested than when cooked through.
Roasting and grilling of meat is done to so heat the outside that the juices are kept in. The meat has to be frequently turned to prevent it burning, but allow plenty of salt to melt into the meat with the dripping, or it will taste just as good as a sole of a boot.
As Mr. Holding said: “The only method I know of for properly making your meat thoroughly indigestible” is to hurry a stew.
To stew or braise any meat or fowl you must leave it long and keep it slow. The flavor is improved if the meat be fried first. Then put in flavoring vegetables, bacon, herbs, and a little stock, and by the time you have done a day’s work you will find a dish fit for a king. Even tough meat can be made delicious in this way, so long as it never gets near boiling and is closely covered. This is a case of “Sow hurry, and you reap indigestion.”
Fish.—A most unwholesome food is stale fish. The gills, if fresh, should be bright red. Canned fish is often poisonous. Fish is a food which you can get more good from, considering the price, than if you bought meat, and the most nourishing fish and the cheapest are the herring mackerel. Pieces of fish, buttered, can be deliciously steamed or baked if laid between two plates over a saucepan of water.
Oatmeal.—Oats, too, are full of value; a pound and a half a day will keep a hard-working man, for oatmeal increases the power of the muscles, and is rich in bone and flesh-forming materials. What you can get out of oats for 5 cents would cost you 75 cents in lean beef. Oats give increased mental vigour and vitality, as they have so much nerve and brain nourishment in them.