Try your oven with the thermometer. Miss Juliet Corson says that a good temperature for baking meat is from 320° to 400° Fahr. Beef and mutton require about twenty minutes to the pound, and you may tell when they are done, and how much, by pressing the surface with the finger. Rare or little-cooked meat will spring back from the touch. There will be little resistance if it is quite well done, and none at all if it is baked thoroughly.
In baking bread, which is, I think, the real test of a cook's merits, a great deal depends on the kneading. You can not knead bread too long or too often, and the more it is kneaded, by which I mean rolled over and pounded with the clinched fist, the finer and closer-grained it will be.
If you have never made bread, ask mamma to let you try, and then, if once or twice she will stand by, and show you how to sift the flour, how to heap the right quantity into a deep pan, and make a hollow in the middle, into which you shall pour your lukewarm water, your yeast, your wee bit of sugar, and your spoonful of salt, following this by enough tepid water to make a soft dough, you will not require her instructions often. The art of making bread once learned is never forgotten. And how proud papa will be the first time he eats a slice of his daughter's home-made bread!
Whatever else you omit, girls, do not omit to learn to prepare food properly; for
"You may live without friends, you may live without books,
But civilized man can not live without cooks."
THE SPRING CONCERT.