Grape juice, cream, and cocoa may be used in place of lemon or orange, in order to give variety where it is necessary to take many of them, but the grape juice acid does not partially digest the egg as the juice of the lemon does.
Eggnog is another means of taking raw eggs.
One method which any housewife can use to test the freshness of eggs is to drop them into a strong, salt brine made of two ounces of salt to a pint of water. A fresh egg will at once sink to the bottom. After the third day the surface of the shell will be even with the surface of the water and with increasing age they will rise still higher.
There is a prevalent opinion that if an egg is boiled hard it is difficult of digestion, but this depends entirely upon the mastication. If it is masticated so that it is a pulp before swallowed, a hard boiled egg is digested as readily as a soft boiled one. If it is not thoroughly masticated, then an egg should not be boiled longer than three to four minutes, or should be put into boiling water and allowed to remain in the water for six minutes without actively boiling. The latter method cooks the egg through more evenly. Another method of cooking the yolk evenly with the whites is to put the egg in cold water, let it come to a boil, and then again immerse in cold water. Or the egg may be put in cold water, let come almost to a boil, removed from the stove, and let stand ten to twelve minutes in the hot water. Any one of the last three methods cooks the white and the yolk evenly.
Carbo-Nitrogenous Foods
Under this class come cereals, legumes, nuts, milk, and milk products. In these foods the nitrogenous and carbonaceous elements are more evenly proportioned than in either the carbonaceous or nitrogenous groups. The different food elements in this group are so evenly divided that one could live for a considerable length of time upon any one food. Some animals build flesh from nuts alone, while the herbivorous animals live upon cereals and plants.
Cereals
Under cereals, used by man for food, come wheat, oats, rye, barley, rice, and corn. As will be noted by the table below, cereals contain a large proportion of starch and are therefore to be used largely for heat and energy. Rice contains the largest proportion and next to rice, wheat flour.
TABLE V—CEREALS