“Cutting in” with a knife is used for combining butter with flour in biscuit and pastry where the butter should not be softened.
Beating with a spoon, or beater of the spoon type, is a free over and over motion, the spoon being lifted from the mixture for the backward stroke. This is used for increasing the smoothness of the mixture after the first stirring, and for beating in air. It needs a strong free motion of the forearm. Beating is also accomplished by the rotary motion of a mechanical beater like the Dover.
Cutting and folding is the delicate process of mixing lightly beaten egg with a liquid or semi-liquid without losing out the air. The
spoon is cut in, sidewise, a rotary motion carries it down and up again, and it folds in the beaten egg as it goes.
Kneading is a motion used with dough, and is a combination of a rocking and pressing motion, accomplished by the hands. A good result can be obtained by some bread machines, and this is the cleaner method.
Rolling out is just what the term denotes, a rolling of a thick piece of dough by means of a cylindrical wooden “pin” to the thickness proper for cookies and crusts. Dry bread is also rolled to break it into fine crumbs.
Pounding and grinding are usually accomplished for us now in factories in breaking of spices and coffee. It is better to have a coffee mill at home.
The order of mixing is important in its effect in batters and doughs and is discussed in that chapter.
Cooking processes.—For the beginnings of cooking we should need to go back to the days when game was roasted by the open fire, built for warmth, or corn parched on hot stones. Perhaps some root was cooked in the hot ashes. This primitive method of roasting we still use in camp fires, and in modified form wherever food is directly exposed to the heat of coal or gas. Water could not be a cooking medium until man advanced at least to the first stage of pottery making, when some rude basket daubed with clay was water-tight and sufficiently heat proof.
Application of heat is the most difficult stage of the whole process of cookery. It is so easy to have the heat too intense, or too low, to expose the food for too long or too short a time to its action. Most of our apparatus fails to give us a uniform heat, the tendency being to an increase or decrease of temperature. Since the boiling temperature of water remains at 212° F., boiling is an easy process to manage, provided the water does not boil out. The presence of water insures a low or moderate temperature always.