.

_Hominy._--Hominy is seldom well cooked. It is often lumpy and raw, and
yet has a burned taste which comes from being cooked in too little water,
while if too much is used it goes all to soup and can never be made good.
Salt a quart of boiling water, and very carefully stir into it a cup of
hominy. Stir often and add a little water from time to time if it gets
too dry. Cook until every grain is thoroughly done.

_Rice._--Rice is rarely well prepared, the greatest trouble being to get
each grain well cooked without making it mushy. When properly cooked each
grain will be firm and distinct, and at the same time soft and tender.
Wash half a cupful of rice thoroughly, put it in a quart of boiling
salted water, and let it boil for half an hour; then drain it thoroughly
and steam it in a colander for an hour.

_Corn-Bread._--Corn-bread should be something like rice: every particle
thoroughly cooked and soft, and yet not sticking together, so that the
inside is dry and crumbly while the outside is crisp and nutty. The
thinner corn-bread is baked the more perfectly it cooks. It should not be
more than an inch thick and preferably less. A cannon-ball of raw meal,
with only the thinnest of surfaces decently baked, is an insult to a
man's intelligence as well as to his digestion. This is the way to
prepare it properly. Sift a teaspoonful of baking powder into a pint of
corn meal. Mix in a piece of butter the size of a walnut and add sweet
milk until you get a dough that can be kneaded into a cake. Bake in a hot
oven until brown and well done. A little richer corn-bread is made by
heating a pint of sweet milk and pouring it over a pint of corn-meal.
Melt a piece of butter the size of a walnut, beat two eggs, add a little
salt, and mix well into the meal. Put in a shallow dish, and bake about a
half hour in a quick oven.

_Biscuits._--Biscuits should be thin, crisp, delicately browned and free
from flour. The inside of a biscuit should be flaky and dry. Thick,
soggy, heavy biscuits impose a severe task upon digestion. Make the
biscuits about two inches in diameter, and three-quarters of an inch
thick. Bake them brown on both the top and the bottom. It is much easier
to make light, wholesome biscuits with baking-powder than with soda.
Buttermilk biscuits are very delicate and palatable, but not quite so
certain to turn out well. If soda is not properly used you will have a
yellow, evil-smelling compound, or else there will not