Farmers' Wives can Cook and Keep Cool

Taranaki Daily News, 30 September 1940, Page 31 (Supplement)

Farmers' Wives can Cook and Keep Cool

Sorne farmers' wives are born cooks, others have cooking thrust upon them. The former find pleasure in their skill, the latter have to tread the harder road of disappointment and failure. Both for good cooks and cooks who are not so good electricity has made the job infinitely lighter of recent years. Unlike the wood or coal range it possesses the virtue of regularity in its temperature attainable as easily by the worst cook in the world as by the best. Both need only turn a switch and observe the thermometer. One can cook and keep cool when dealing with electricity. There is no need to bend repeatedly over a hot oven to see how the dinner is progressing. A book of instruction to-day replaces the lessons of yesterday's experience, and, where power is available, any woman can tell just when to put in the meat, or the fish, or the sweet as easily as she knows when to take it out. In the heat of summer too, a kitchcn never becomes overheated, because the heat is retained inside the oven not dissipated up a flu or about the room. Here is something that will interest the economical cook. It has been pioved that with electric cooking there is far less shrinkage than in cooking with any other medium. A leg of lamb weighing three pounds, for instance, will lose only four ounces. With another soruce of heat it will shrink nearly eight ounces. For meat, the oven should be switched

on full for about 10 minutes until the thermometer registers 450 degrees. It should then be turned to low for the time required to cook the joint. Usually, beef requires 20 minutes to each pound pius 20 minutes, pork, mutton or veal 25 minutes to the poUnd plus 25 minutes, poultry and game 15 minutes to the pound plus 15 minutes. Far more irksome than cooking by the old methods in grandmother's day was the cleaning afterwards. This has been reduced to a minimum with an electrio cooker. Generally, a wipe round will suffice for the present generation.