The art of cookery

To Bake Beans. — Soak a quart of white beans in cold water over night, or for eight or ten hours, then drain and put to cook in sufficient cold water to cover them. Add a teaspoonful of salt and half a teaspoonful of soda, and as soon as the water boils drain it off. Put in the pot in which the beans are to be baked half a pound of salt pork or corned beef and a tablespoonful of white sugar, or twice as much New Orleans molasses. Pour in the beans, fill the pot to within an inch of the top with boiling water, cover with a close-fitting lid, and bake in a very moderate oven from twelve to eighteen hours. As the water evaporates replace it with sufficient boiling water to keep the beans covered during the entire time they are in the oven. If the beans are liked browned they can be poured into a shallow baking pan and put in a hot oven until they are the color desired. To Bake Apples, No. i. — Select apples of a uniform size, remove the center of the blossom end and specks that may be in the fruit, wash and rinse in clean water, place, stems upward, in an earthen or granite-ware baking dish, pierce in several places with a fork, and put in an oven at the temperature required for bread. When perfectly baked the skins will be brown, and the flesh soft and rich in flavor. To Bake Apples, No. 2. — Pare and core the apples, leaving them whole, rinse in cold water, and place close together in a baking dish, the bottom of which has Baking. 63 been well greased with butter and lightly sprinkled with granulated sugar. Sprinkle sugar over the apples and bake in a hot oven until they are a rich brown color. Unless the apples are very tart and juicy they should, when put to bake, be covered for about ten minutes. Apples baked in this manner are delicious served with the meat course at dinner. If they are to be served with cream for dessert, a little water and more sugar may be added when put to bake, and they may also be flavored with orange, lemon, or other fruit flavoring. But if the seeds are removed from the cores and put in the baking dish with the apples they will give them a finer flavor than any foreign flavoring substance that can be added. Sweet apples may be baked in the same manner as sour apples, but when pared, they should be basted with thin syrup, or with New Orleans molasses and water mixed in equal proportions. Pears are baked in all respects like apples. To Bake Bananas. — Peel the bananas, roll in melted butter and granulated sugar, lay a little distance apart in a roasting pan, and brown in a hot oven. Shake the pan occasionally while the bananas are baking. To Bake Almonds. — To blanch or skin almonds pour hot water over them and let them remain in the water until the skins can be slipped off readily. After they are blanched mix a teaspoonful of olive oil or melted butter with each quart of almonds, put them in a roasting pan, and cook till a light brown, in an oven of the temperature required for bread. Dust with fine salt as soon as taken from the oven. 64 The Art of Cookery.