Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 July 1875 — AGRICULTURAL AND DOMESTIC. [ARTICLE]

AGRICULTURAL AND DOMESTIC.

—Nutmeg Cake.—One cup butter, three eggs, two cups sugar,one-half nutmeg, four cups flour, rind of one lemon, one cup of milk, one teaspoon soda, two teaspoons ert-am tartar. First mix butter and sugar together, tj|en add two cups flour, one-half cup milk-jibe three eggs lteaten, the nutmeg grated, also rind of lemon, then the other two cups of flour, with the cream tartar mixed through it, and lastly the onehalf cup milk with the soda dissolved therein. Beat all thoroughlv and bake in bread pans, buttered and'papered. F —Strawberry- ice cream forms a delicious dessert on a hot day, and is easily made wherever the berries and cream can hi* had in sufficient quantities. Take a quart of berries after they' have been hulled, and sprinkle over them one large coffee cup of fine white sugar; let them stand two or three hours, and then mash them up fine, and squeeze out the juice through a strong cloth. Add another large cup of 'this juice, and then stir in one quart of pure, sweet cream, or a pint and a half of cream and the beaten whites of three eggs. Mix all together and freeze, and when half frozen turn in one pint of fresh berries and freez.e stiff'. The juice needs to be made very' sweet or else it will curdle the cream. —Nothing so well symbolizes the economical habits of Continental Europe, and especially France, as the pot au feu. This is an iron pot kept constantly simmering upon the fire, into which is put from day to day' all the wholesome remnants of food which in this country are thrown away'.' Our people in their magnificent way of doing things never stop to consider how much nutriment adheres even to well-picked bones of porter-house steaks, mutton chops, ribs of beef, legs of mutton, etc. All these, and many things beside,are put into the pot au feu , water, seasoning and fragrant herbs are added as required, and the constant simmering—a solvent for even the toughest of Texan beef—extracts every particle of marrow even, and the bones come out as clean and white as if they had been bleached for years in the sun. Among the common people more than half the nutriment for the day comes from the pot aufeu, and if any member of the family comes home at an unusual hour hungry it affords at all times a meal at once warm and wholesome.—Prairie F'armer.

—Prof. Roberts, of the Cornell University, mads some experiments in growing corn upon the college farm last season, the results of which are valuable. He planted three plats of three-sixteenths of an acre each with corn, and thinned the hills in one lot to three stalks, another to four stalks to a hill; the third was not thinned. The first plat yielded at the rate of 160 bushels, the second 125 bushels and the third 106 bushels (of ears) to the acre. Mr. Roberts states, as the result of many experiments prior to these at the lowa Agricultural College, that the heaviest crops of corn were made by growing three stalks to a hill, and that two stalks to a hill will produce more corn than five stalks. If every stalk produces an ear, and corn be planted three feet apart each way, there will be nearly 100 bushels of shelled graiu per acre. • To grow maximum crops of corn, then, it is only necessary to grow one ear upon a stalk, and ears of such a size that 100 of them will make a bushel of corn. In view of this it is strange that with so prolific a grain as corn a yield of 100 bushels per acre should be considered almost impossible.—American Patron.