As it is the smallest item in the expense of a family, no pains should be spared in procuring the best in market.
American manufacturers have not as yet made a salt free from foreign flavors and suitable to delicate cookery; its peculiar fishy flavor is objectionable, and gives to bread a taste that leads the eater thereof to imagine it had been sliced with a fish-knife.
Most of the leading grocers sell an English salt that is a very valuable assistant in bread-making.
Maize or Indian Corn is the noblest of the cereal grasses, and deserves our liberal patronage and constant praise. From it can be produced an infinite variety of nutritious food, from Tennyson's "dusky loaf that smelt of home" to the simple "hoe cake" of "Old Black Joe."
To enumerate all of the good things produced from corn would make a volume five times the size of this little book. Enough has been said to practically demonstrate the necessity of our being at all times aware of its excellent qualities, if we value health and subsequent happiness.
In America no national question is of more importance than the success or failure of the corn crop. Upon it depends the success not only of large business enterprises, but of business centres. Nearly all of the important domestic animals that are used as food are fed upon it exclusively, and a large percentage of the population depends upon it—directly or indirectly—for very existence, which is conclusive evidence that a failure of this important cereal means starvation and bankruptcy to many, which the failure of the wheat crop would not effect.
Corn Bread.—Sift half a pound each of corn meal and flour, add a scant teaspoonful of salt and a tablespoonful of wheat baking powder. Beat together one ounce of powdered sugar, two eggs, and one ounce of butter; add these to the flour; then gradually add nearly a pint of milk, to make a thin batter, and bake in a hot oven.
Corn-meal Custard.—Beat up three eggs; add to them a quart of milk and an ounce each of butter and sugar. Mix and add gradually a quarter of a pound of very fine corn meal; flavor with nutmeg. Pour into custard cups, and boil or steam for ten minutes; then put them in the oven a moment to brown on top.
Boston Brown Bread.—Sift together half a pound each of rye and wheat flour, one pound of corn meal, one heaping teaspoonful of salt, a heaping tablespoonful of brown sugar, and one of wheat baking powder. Wash, peel, and boil two medium-sized potatoes; rub them through a sieve; thin out the potato with nearly a pint of water, and use this to make the batter. Pour it into well-greased moulds having covers; set them into hot water to within two inches of the top of the moulds, and boil for two hours; then take them out of the water, remove the cover, and place them in the oven for twenty minutes.
A Boston brown bread preparation put up by the Boston Cereal Manufacturing Company is an article of food quite recently introduced, which saves much of the difficult details necessary to make this excellent New England loaf.