What is the white part inside an egg?

“When I crack an egg, sometimes there’s a stringy white piece attached to the yolk. What is that? Should I take it out?”

Merriam–Webster’s Visual Dictionary provided us with a labeled diagram of the inside of a bird egg, allowing us to identify just what part of the egg our patron was referring to and what purpose it serves. The stringy white bit is called the chalaza. It’s a ropy filament of egg white that’s there to keep the yolk in the center of the egg. It can also be an indicator of freshness – the more noticeable the chalaza, the fresher the egg.

The chalaza is perfectly fine to eat and its presence is not noticed in most dishes. However, it can interfere with the smooth texture of sauces and custards, so cooks will sometimes remove it.

CLEVNET carries a variety of egg-specific cookbooks, including Marie Simmon’s The Good Egg, Andrea Slonecker’s Eggs on Top, Terry Blonder Golson’s The Farmstead Egg Guide and Cookbook, and Kathy Casey’s D’lish Deviled Eggs. Any of these books can be ordered in to our library.

What is cream of tartar for? Can you substitute anything for it?

A patron came across a frosting recipe calling for cream of tartar and they were wondering what exact purpose it served. One of our librarians recalled using it in sugar cookies and one remembered using it in meringues, but neither knew exactly what it did in the recipe or if there were substitutes. We looked in Baking Illustrated, Rose Levy Beranbaum’s Baking Bible and on Slate.com for more information.

Cream of tartar, also called potassium bitartrate, is an acid by-product of making wine or grape juice. It will last indefinitely as long as it’s kept away from moisture.

In the kitchen, it can be used to stabilize egg whites (as in the meringues) so they can be whipped more without collapsing. It will also prevent caramels and sugar syrups from crystallizing, making them creamier. (This may have been its purpose in the frosting recipe.) When mixed with baking soda and a liquid, it acts as a leavening agent. Its acidic properties can also help certain foods, like red cabbage, potatoes, and cauliflower, keep their color when boiled. As to substitutions, a bit of lemon juice serves a similar purpose in stabilizing egg whites, though, being liquid and less acidic, it doesn’t do the job as well. 

How do I find old cookbooks on CLEVNET?

“Is there a way to search for books by publication date? I want to look at old cookbooks.”

The CLEVNET catalog offers a lot of different ways to narrow down your search. Once you’ve typed something in the search bar at the top, you can narrow your search by library, audience (adult, children, or teen), language, content (nonfiction, fiction, or undetermined), and more, including published date.

Different searches bring up different results. When searching for “cookbooks” as a subject and narrowing our search to show only items available at Newton Falls, the earliest publication date was 1972: The Vegetarian Epicure by Anna Thomas. However, searching “cookbook” as a keyword instead of a subject brought up Mary Emma Showalter’s Mennonite Community Cookbook, published twenty-two years earlier. The keyword “recipe” showed us an even older book: Marcelle Morphy’s Recipes of All Nations, published in 1935.

If you’re looking for old-fashioned recipes, they may not necessarily be in the oldest cookbooks. The Little House Cookbook by Barbara M. Walker is a book of authentic frontier recipes published in 1979. Grandma’s Wartime Kitchen by Joanne Lamb Hayes, published in 2000, deals with World War II cooking and the recipes people developed to get around rationing. We even have The Thirteen Colonies Cookbook by Mary Donovan, published in 1975.

Can you substitute essential oil for fresh ginger?

“Can you substitute ginger essential oil for fresh ginger?” One of our patrons was baking and didn’t want to have to buy an entire ginger root only to use a little of it. They already had organic food-grade essential oil in their house (while not all essential oil is necessarily safe to eat, you can buy varieties that are) and wondered if they could substitute.

We found a forum post on Chowhound discussing ginger essential oil in food, and it led us to believe that our patron would only need to use a very small amount of their oil, as everyone posting noted that it was very potent. However, we still couldn’t find a clear substitution ratio.

Eventually, we found a recipe in Aromatic Monthly for chai tea using either essential oils or whole spices. It called for either one drop of ginger oil or “two pea size fresh ginger (mulched).” Finally we had something of an equivalency, but it was too imprecise to be of much help. Our patron ultimately decided that their best option was to add the oil a drop at a time until they achieved the flavor they wanted.

For more information on essential oils (though tending more toward aromatherapy than cooking), The A to Z of Essential Oils by E. Joy Bowles, Complete Aromatherapy Handbook by Susanne Fischer-Rizzi, and The Complete Illustrated Guide to Aromatherapy by Julia Lawless are available at the Newton Falls Public Library. For more information on ginger specifically, Helen Sudell’s Ginger: A Book of Recipes is available through CLEVNET.

Can I ship cookies to Australia?

“Can I ship gingerbread cookies to Australia?”

With the holidays coming up, one of our patrons was planning how she’d send her Christmas cookies to her friend overseas. She wanted to know if they’d last the trip and if they’d be able to clear customs once they arrived.

We checked the Australia Customs and Border Protection website and found that there shouldn’t be any need to pay taxes or duties on the cookies, since they wouldn’t be worth more than AUD1,000. The prohibited imports list includes porpoises, certain novelty erasers, and radioactive material, but cookies are in the clear.

They should also still be fresh by the time they arrive. According to Nancy Baggett’s The All-American Cookie Book and Tish Boyle’s The Good Cookie, gingerbread cookies can be stored in an airtight container for three to four weeks. Christmas Cookies Are for Giving by Kristin Johnson and Mimi Cummins cautions bakers that crispy cookies like gingerbread break more easily in transit. Johnson and Cummins recommend baking the cookies in small geometric shapes (cutout circles, for instance, will be more likely to make it in one piece than cutout reindeer) and packing them carefully.

Fortunately, Christmas Cookies Are for Giving and the Land O’ Lakes website both have tips on how to pack the cookies so that they survive their journey. Our patron will need a rigid container (such as a tin), bubble wrap, plastic wrap or tinfoil, and another large box for shipping that allows for at least two inches of cushion all around the cookie container. First, use plastic wrap or tinfoil to wrap together similarly-sized cookies in packages of four to six. Line the container, putting bubble wrap in the bottom and a piece of plastic wrap or tinfoil on top of it that will be big enough to cover the cookies once they’re all packed. Layer the cookies in the container, separating the layers with more bubble wrap or crumpled up tissue paper. Once the cookies are all in, cover them with a final layer of bubble wrap and wrap the extra lining over them before sealing the container. Put the container inside the large box and surround it with packing material (either more bubble wrap, packing peanuts, or crumpled up newspaper). Tape up the box securely and be sure to mark it perishable, and the gingerbread cookies should be able to make their journey.

Why Do Potatoes Sprout?

“What makes potatoes start sprouting? Are they okay to eat?” If you’ve left a bag of potatoes sitting around for a while, you might have noticed them starting to grow green, white, or somewhat purple sprouts. That’s the potato trying to grow into a new plant.

The sprouts themselves, as well as any green part of the potato, are home to a toxic alkaloid called solanine and must be removed. Eating them will make you sick - the National Library of Medicine even has a page on their website devoted to potato plant poisoning – though it would take quite a few to do it. The solanine gives the potato a bitter taste, so it wouldn’t be worth eating anyway.

As long as the sprouted potatoes are still firm and haven’t started to shrivel up, there’s no reason to throw them away. Once the sprouts and any green part of the potato have been removed, it’s safe to eat.

You can also plant your sprouted potatoes, though The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible by Edward C. Smith recommends using seed potatoes (which are available from garden supply stores and were grown for the express purpose of being planted) rather than supermarket potatoes for gardening.

To inhibit sprouting and keep your potatoes in their best condition, store them in a cool, dark, dry place with ample ventilation.

For more information on growing potatoes, check out Food Grown Right, in Your Backyard, by Colin McCrate and Brad Halm, Ortho's Complete Guide to Vegetables, or The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener by Niki Jabbour, available at the Newton Falls Public Library. If you're looking to learn about the potato's history, Andrew F. Smith's Potato: A Global History, John Reader's Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent, and Michael Pollan's The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-eye View of the World are all available through CLEVNET. For recipes, we have Kay Halsey's Potatoes on the shelf here at Newton Falls. Or you could order Alex Barker's Potato: The Definitive Guide to Potatoes and Potato Cooking through CLEVNET and get information on potato cooking, gardening, and history. 

What Is Converted Rice?

“My recipe calls for ‘converted rice’ but I’m not sure what that is.”

Mark Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything” had the answer. The difference is in how it’s processed. All rice grows with a husk, which is always removed, and a layer of bran. White rice has had its bran removed, whereas brown rice remains intact. Converted rice is white rice, but, before it’s processed, it’s steamed, so some of the nutrients from the bran are forced into the kernel. The steaming turns the rice a kind of yellow color, and makes it a little healthier than white rice, though not as healthy as brown rice.

A blogger on Agricultured.org taste-tested brown, white, and converted rice. She found that converted rice has a pleasant texture and a milder flavor than brown rice while still being more flavorful than white rice. It’s also less sticky than both brown and white rice. She suggests using converted rice in the crock-pot. Since it cooks faster than brown rice but slower than white rice, it will cook more evenly but won’t get soggy.

Uncle Ben’s is a popular brand of converted rice that most people are probably familiar with. According to Julia Child’s “The Way to Cook,” “converted rice” is actually a patented term, and it’s more commonly known as parboiled rice, which may be why our patron hadn’t heard of it.

Do You Have Any Information On Cleaning And Caring For A Cast-iron Skillet?

"Do you have any information on cleaning and caring for a cast-iron skillet?" One of our Newton Falls Public Library patrons had recently inherited a cast-iron skillet and wanted to be sure they were taking care of it properly so that it would perform at its best.

We checked Consumer Reports Books' How to Clean Practically Anything and Don Aslett's How Do I Clean the Moosehead? and 99 More Tough Questions About Housecleaning, but, although we did find out how to clean a moosehead, there was no information about cast-iron skillets. We had better luck with The Good Housekeeping Household Encyclopedia, Jeff Bredenberg's Clean It Fast Clean It Right, and Carla Emery's The Encyclopedia of Country Living, all of which featured a small section on how to clean cast-iron cookware. Putting "how to clean a cast iron skillet" into an online search engine also brought up an article on the Real Simple website.

It's very important to season cast-iron cookware so as to give it its nonstick surface. Season your cookware before you use it for the first time, and then, after that, as often as you like. To season a pot or skillet, clean it first in hot soapy water. Then, grease the inside with suet, vegetable oil, or shortening and leave it to "bake" in the oven. Sources vary on how long to leave it in and how high the temperature must be. The Encyclopedia of Country Living suggests 8-10 hours at 250-275°F, whereas Real Simple suggests 350°F for just over an hour and Clean It Fast Clean It Right says 200-300°F for 30 minutes. However, all sources agree that if your cast-iron pot or pan comes with a lid, remove it during the seasoning process or else it will become irrevocably stuck.

Once you've started using your skillet, wash and dry it with care. Avoid harsh cleaning agents and metal scrapers such as steel wool, as those will scrape off the seasoning, though you can use baking soda or coarse salt if you need some extra scrubbing power. Be sure to dry it carefully and store it in a dry place to prevent rust. (If your cookware does rust, scrub the rust off with steel wool, re-season it, and start over.) You can grease your skillet again before storing if you want to continue to build up the nonstick coating.

Though the care and cleaning of cast-iron is a little different than it is for most cookware and may take some getting used to, properly cared for cast-iron cookware can last for generations.

Can You Help Me Find A Sausage Recipe?

"I'm looking for a recipe for homemade sausage."  To the staff of the Newton Falls Public Library this seemed to be a simple request.  The library owns a copy of  "The Sausage-making Cookbook"  by Jerry Predika.  However, our patron already had their own copy of this title and it did not include a recipe quite to their liking.  At this time, she did not wish to get a recipe off the Internet; she preferred something from a book.

In our extensive collection of cookbooks, we found several books that we thought might have what she wanted including "The Complete Meat Cookbook: A Juicy and Authoritative Guide to Selecting, Seasoning, and Cooking Today's Beef, Pork, Lamb, and Veal" by Bruce Aidells and Denis Kelly, "The Way to Cook" by Julia Child, and "Lidia's Italian Table" by Lidia Bastianich.  These all contained recipes either too heavily spiced or with ingredients our patron did not wish to use.

Continuing our discussion, our patron explained that they were looking to make a lightly seasoned old-fashioned country sausage. The recipe in Mary Emma Showalter's "Mennonite Community Cookbook: Favorite Family Recipes" still wasn't exactly the recipe she wanted.  

Thinking a bit out of the box, we decided to take a look at our collection of Foxfire books. The first Foxfire book was published in 1972.  "The 'Foxfire Book' and its eleven companion volumes stand memorial to the people and the vanishing culture of the Southern Appalachian Mountains, brought to life for readers through the words of those who were born, lived their lives, and passed away there" [www.foxfire.org/thefoxfirebooks.aspx].  The full title of the first book is "The Foxfire Book: HogDressing; Log Cabin Building; Mountain Crafts and Foods; Planting by the Signs;Snake Lore, Hunting Tales, Faith Healing; Moonshining; and Other Affairs of Plain Living." The chapter on Hog Dressing included Slaughtering Hogs, Curing and Smoking Hog, and Recipes for Hog.  She said this sausage recipe might have the right combination of spices.

In the event the recipe did not taste as she imagined, our patron also placed holds on some of the other sausage making books in our shared CLEVNET catalog.

I Need a Recipe for Making Buttermilk

"Help," our caller said "I need a recipe for making buttermilk.  Not the one that uses vinegar or lemon juice; the one that uses cream of tartar."  While the staff of the Newton Falls Public Library was more familiar with the latter, they had heard of the former.

We  were successful with an online search using the terms "buttermilk cream of tartar substitute."  The website JoyTheBaker.com had three options for creating buttermilk. They included the familiar one using lemon juice, the one requested using cream of tartar, and a recipe with yogurt.  Of the three, the recipe our patron needed said to "Mix 1 cup of milk with 1 3/4 teaspoon cream of tartar.  To ensure that the mixture doesn’t get lumpy, mix the cream of tartar with 2 Tablespoons of milk. Once mixed, add the rest of the cup of milk."

If you do not have Internet access or the library is closed, when you run short of certain recipe ingredients while preparing a meal, emergency substitutions can be found in many home cookbooks.  Substitutions and measurement equivalents can often be located on the inside covers of books like "New Cook Book" by Better Homes and Gardens.

Can You Help Me Find My Grandmother's Cookie Recipe?

Our caller asked “When I was a child, my grandmother used to make a cookie with pork cracklings, the brown bits after cooking pork.  They were really good, but she never wrote down any of her recipes. I think she called them bagachels.  Can you help me find the recipe?”  Since it sounded like a food related to a particular ethnic background, the Newton Falls Public Library staff felt they needed some more information.  Talking with her we found that her grandmother had been born in 1868 in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Searching online for the terms “bagachel cookie” did not bring up any useful results. Considering how some letters sound like others, we tried “pagachel cookie.” Here we found the website, TheWorld's Best Photos of pogácsa - Flickr Hive Mind.  The tempting photographs of cookies included one called Pagachel / Pogácsa.  Our search for pogácsa took us to the website, Mashpedia. The article said that it

 “is a type of savory scone in Hungarian cuisine. It is also popularly eaten in nearby Slovakia 

. . . As with scones and biscuits, eggs and butter are common ingredients, as is milk, cream or sour cream. Many traditional versions exist, with size, shape—the most common is round—and flavor variations in each region/city of Hungary. A dozen different ingredients can be found either in the dough, sprinkled on top before baking, or both: medium-firm fresh cheeses, aged dry hard cheese(s), pork crackling (tepertő), cabbage, black pepper, hot or sweet paprika, garlic, red onion, caraway seeds, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds or poppy seeds.”

The key ingredient, pork cracklings, was included in this description. Now we were able to locate a basic pagachel recipe for our patron and she could add the cracklings to it, as she remembered her grandmother doing.

Gingerbread and Sauerkraut

The winter holidays are coming. This week we received two interesting seasonal food questions. “I’m looking for a gingerbread recipe which uses flour, eggs, milk, baking soda, and yeast.” The Newton Falls Public Library staff thought this sounded like a ordinary gingerbread recipe until the caller got to the last ingredient; yeast is not a commonly used ingredient for this item. She was from out of town and unable to come into the library and did not own a computer, so we searched online for recipes. Cheftessbakeresse.blogspot.com had a recipe for yeast-raised orange gingerbread and Georgene-a-bramlage.suite.com had an assortment of gingerbread recipes for Christmas and winter. We gave the caller the recipes we found for her which fit your ingredients list.

The second interesting question was “I’m making sauerkraut in a crock pot and am concerned about mold-like stuff growing on the top. Is this normal?”  Alton Brown of the Foodnetwork.com states “Check cabbage every other day for approximately 2 weeks and skim the surface of scum, if necessary.” Since this stated in his recipe, apparently our patron’s concern was a common one. The book, The Self-sufficient Life and How to Live it: the complete back-to-basics guide by John Seymour also had information about making sauerkraut and our patron took home this resource.

Can You Help Me Find a Vegetarian Indian Cookbook?

“I was watching a TV show with Gordon Ramsey featuring best restaurants. The episode was about vegetarian Indian food. I was hoping you could help me find a cookbook for it.” In order for the Newton Falls Public Library staff to assist our patron, our first step was to find what restaurant was on the show.

We discovered information about the show online by searching for ‘Gordon Ramsay best restaurants.” There is a BBC program titled Ramsay’s Best Restaurant. On the episode guide we found two Indian restaurants competing against each other. “With two generations of family behind the food, Prashad specializes in vegetarian dishes and the chefs use their hands to prepare the food, believing that love will be passed through each dish.” This was the one which our patron viewed.

Searching online for “Prashad vegetarian cookbook” we found two books, Prashad-Cooking with Indian Masters by J.Indersingh Kalra and Indian Vegetarian Cooking from an American Kitchen by Vasantha Prasad. Our patron thought she might like the latter, so we placed a hold on it through our new shared Clevnet catalog, www.clevnet.org, and will notify her when it arrives at our library.

How Do I Hollow Out an Onion?

“I borrowed the Williams-Sonoma book, Main Dishes from the library. It has a recipe for roasted onions stuffed with Italian sausage, egg, and fresh bread crumbs that looks very good. The instructions call for hollowing out the onions, stuffing them, placing them in a baking dish filled with ½ inches of water, and baking at 350 degrees for about an hour. But how do you hollow them and leave the ½ inch thick shell required?” The patron showed the Newton Falls Public Library staff the photograph and directions for this very tasty looking dish on page 63.

While having many combined years of cooking experience, our staff wasn’t really sure how one went about hollowing an onion. The book in which the patron found the recipe offers “colorful recipes for health & well-being” but no instructions for creating an onion shell. The search continued by examining the Larousse Gastronomique: the new American edition of the world's greatest culinary encyclopedia. In the listing for onions on page 744, there are recipes, including stuffed onions. These instructions explain when preparing this dish, you need to peel the medium sized onion without splitting the outer layer. Remove about ¼ of the onion by cutting it horizontally at the stalk. Blanch the remaining ¾ in salted water for about ten minutes, drain, rinse with cold water, and drain again. Finally scoop out the inside; leaving at least a thickness of 2 layers all around, and the onion is ready for filling.

I Need to Find the McCall's Cooking School Magazine's Beef Wellington Recipe

“I’m trying to help a lady who is looking for a recipe for Beef Wellington. It was originally printed in the 1970s or 1980s, in an issue the McCall's Cooking School Magazine. The ingredients include Madeira wine, pate, celery, carrots, garlic, and shallots, but not onions, and parchment paper not puff pastry. You cook the vegetables, chop them, wrap them in cheese cloth, and squeeze out the juice using the handle of a wooden spoon to twist the cloth. The juice is used in cooking; dispose of what remains in the cheese cloth. I’m not having any success. Can you help me?” The Newton Falls Public Library staff can sympathize with the frustration of trying to find that missing recipe.

There is not a single McCall’s cookbook on the seventeen shelves of cookbooks owned by the library, nor in our shared TiPL [Trumbull Independent Public Library Consortium] catalog. Our staff expanded the search online and found a couple of websites with similar recipes. At   www.foodtimeline.org/foodmeats.html#beefwellington we found Julia Child’s recipe. community.cookinglight.com/showthread.php?t=104317 had Beef Wellington Without Fear. While both of these recipes had similarities to the one requested, neither was “the” recipe. Another website, www.chef.com has many of the McCall's Cooking School recipes, but not the one needed.

In our search, we discovered that it was published in 1984 and was subscription based. The purchaser received binders, and then periodically pages to insert.  We checked the Ohio Shares MORE statewide catalog for “McCall's Cooking School Magazine.”  We could not find the magazine, but we did find that the Ridgeway Branch of Ridgemont Public Library owns volumes 1 and 2 of the 3 volume McCall's Cooking School: step-by-step directions for mistake-proof recipes set. We contacted them and their librarian went to look for the item.  She returned our call with the sad news that there were 3 pages missing from the meat section of the loose leaf binders; one of which was the Beef Wellington Recipe.  

We contacted our patron. She explained that she is a “recipe hunter” who routinely searches for lost recipes.  She was contacted to search for this recipe. While she owns a huge collection of cookbooks and single recipes; she does not have this particular magazine. She is hoping that one of our patrons saved their issues of McCall’s Cooking School Magazine and would be willing to share the recipe with us. If you have or find this recipe, please contact Carol at the Newton Falls Public Library, 204 S. Canal St., Newton Falls, Ohio 44444, 330-872-1282, fax 330-872-9153, or email carolbaker@newtonfalls.org.