Scientific cooking with scientific methods

Cover blanched chestnuts with boiling water, and simmer slowly until tender; it will take from one and one-half to two hours. Weigh the nuts before cooking, and make syrup of sugar and water same in weight as nuts. Cook syrup until thick. Add nuts and cook for one and one-half hours. Strain out nuts, and reduce syrup. Place chestnuts in glass jars. Flavor ^yrup with vanilla, reduce until very thick, and pour over the nuts. This makes a very rich preserve, and is used in pudding sauces, pudding, etc. Chestnut Cup. Use one tablespoon of preserved chestnuts cut into slices, with a little of the syrup in bottom of a sherbert glass. Put in a spoonful of vanilla ice-cream with whipped and flavored cream on top. Nut Cutlets. 2 cups soft bread crumbs. 1 cup milk, 1 cup nut meat. i^ teaspoon salt. 2 tablespoons butter. i^ teaspoon pepper. 2 tablespoons flour. 1 egg. A little paprika. Melt butter, add flour, salt and pepper, then the milk slowly. Stir until boiling, then remove from fire, add the beaten egg, stir until the egg is set, then add the nut meat and the fine crumbs. Mix thoroughly and turn onto plate to cool. Shape into cutlets. Crumb and egg. Fry in deep, hot fat, drain on paper, and place a two-inch length of plain boiled macaroni in small end of each cutlet. Serve with tomato sauce. Pecan-nuts, walnuts or our native hickory-nuts may be used for these cutlets. Nut Omelet. ^/4 cup ground nuts. 14 teaspoon salt. 3 eggs. % teaspoon paprika. 3 tablespoons water. Butter size of walnut. Beat eggs, after separating yolks, until lemon color and thick, and whites very stiff. Add salt, paprika and nut meat to yolks, and mix well, then fold in the whites, and in hot omelet-pan put the piece of butter, and with knife butter bottom and sides of pan. Turn in the eggs and spread on pan, and cook slowly, shaking so the omelet does not burn. When well set, fold and turn on hot platter. Garnish and serve at once. CHAPTER XX. EGGS are considered a typical food for both the sick and well, from the fact that they contain the elements required in the proportions necessary to support the body, but, on account of their food value being in such a concentrated form, it is always necessary to combine them with some carbonaceous food to give bulk in the stomach to produce the proper action to cause digestion. For this reason we serve potatoes and rice, or some food rich in starch. A pound of eggs (nine eggs) is considered the equivalent in nutritive value to a pound of meat or a pound of cheese. From this standpoint you can see that eggs can be used by the economist when they sell at twenty-five cents per dozen, as it is considered that seven eggs are all that is necessary for a day, combined with the starchy food. Eggs want to be strictly fresh for cooking, to have good results. Eggs, after the first twenty-four hours, deteriorate. Owing to the shell being porous, the water passes off through the pores, air rushes in to replace the vacuum, and this will soon produce decomposition. In the white of the egg albumen is found in its purest form. Eggs always want to be cooked at a low degree of heat, for the reason that albumen will coagulate at a temperature of from 135° to 160° F., and, if cooked too quickly, they become tough and hard to digest.