A Course of Lectures on the Principles of Domestic Economy and Cookery

for a little while. But baked potatoes deteriorate every moment they stand after they are tender. You should serve baked potatoes just the moment they are done, if you want them to be perfect. If you wrap them up in a napkin it keeps in the steam. The longer they stand, the more of the hard skin forms on them, and if you let them stand for half an hour or more you find the skin sometimes a sixteenth of an inch thick. You can take a little slice off the end without breaking them, to permit the escape of the steam. But serve them just as quick as you can. In sending them to the table do not put the dish cover on them. Throw a napkin over them to keep the heat in. I have found that in baking potatoes that the hotter the oven the better the potatoes would be; that is, the more quickly they would be baked. I have been able to bake them sometimes in twenty minutes. To soak potatoes in cold water restores a little of their moisture that may have been lost by the natural evaporation. For instance, late in the winter you will find potatoes slightly shriveled. That is caused by the escape of the moisture. If you had weighed them in the fall, and weighed them again at that time you would find they weighed less. To soak them for an hour or more before you cook them is to restore that wasted water and to increase the substance of the potato. There is very little nutriment lost in the waste of the moisture; it is only the bulk of the potato. You do not need to salt the water in which the potatoes are soaked. The only effect of salting water would be to make it colder. In soaking green vegetables it is well to salt the water, because if there are any insects in the vegetables they are killed by the action of the salt. In lettuce, or cabbage, or cauliflower, there are insects that hide away among