To clean oven doors lined with alu minum, mix whiting and potash or sal soda with water and scrub by means of a stiff brush. After baking or roasting, wipe out the oven while still warm. Use an old newspaper for this purpose. This will save much future trouble in scrubbing.
To wash the drip trays, take them out while warm, fill them with boiling water in which a little caustic potash or sal soda is dissolved, and scrub with a coarse fiber brush.
To kill the odors of cooking, put a few pieces of charcoal tied with a piece of white cheese cloth in cabbage, onions, or similar dishes. This will be a great help in reducing the odor.
To Light Gas Stoves.—In lighting the top burners do not be in a hurry. Locate the burner you wish to use, and with your eye follow the pipe from the burner down to the keys in front of the range, so as to be sure you turn the proper key. When you turn on the gas count five; meanwhile strike a match. After the fifth count apply the match to the back of the burner, bringing it forward over the burner. This method of lighting is almost sure to prevent the snapping sound sometimes heard.
If spurts of flame are not seen at all the holes in a burner, d. slight breath directed across the flames will cause all the jets to light.
To prevent snapping and burning of gas in the air mixers, loosen the front of the air mixer just behind the key, and reduce the opening until the burner can be lighted. There should never be a white tip on the flame.
Waste of Gas. — Turn down the burner as soon as the food begins to cook. When water bubbles the burner should be turned down. It is a com mon mistake to suppose that when the water in a dish or vessel reaches the boiling point it will continue to get hotter if the gas is left turned on full. In fact, water turns to steam at the boiling point, 212° F., and does not get any hotter, but merely evaporates more quickly; and there is not only waste of gas but additional trouble in replacing the water lost by evapora tion, as well as the liability of food burning or cooking into a sticky mass on the bottom of the saucepan. When
food begins to cook, the valve or cock can be turned off two thirds. Do not turn on the gas and go hunting for a match in another room. Do not light the burners, and then stop to prepare vegetables or hunt up sauce pans. Light the burner just as you reach the range, saucepan in hand, ready to begin cooking, and turn off the gas as soon as the saucepan is removed.
Obtain a set of two semicircular or three triangular saucepans that can be placed on a single burner at the same time. They economize space and gas, as two or three vegetables can be cooked at the same time over the same burner.
Ironing with Gas.—Get a strip of metal large enough to hold four or five flatirons, and heat the irons on this. A single gas burner will heat the metal from end to end, and thus do the work of three or four. The same strip of metal can be used for making griddlecakes. Turn over the irons a metal pan so as to save the top heat, and turn the gas down low. With care, four or five flats can be kept hot at a cost of about ten cents for an ordinary ironing. Do not put flatirons directly over a gas flame, as the watery vapor from the flame will rust and consequently roughen them.
Or get a flatiron heated with gas, which can be connected with rubber gas tubing. Several of these irons are on the market, and with proper adjustment will give satisfactory re sults.
Broiling with Gas.—To broil with gas, light the burner about ten min utes before the meat is put into the broiling compartment. Take off the excess of fat, wipe the meat with a damp cloth, slice the gristle to keep the edge from curling, and lay the meat on the gridiron as close to the fire as possible. Always leave the broiling oven door open to prevent the meat from taking fire.
Put a little water in the drip pan to catch and cool the melted fat.