Rensselaer Union, Volume 11, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 July 1879 — Heusehold Ice-Chests and How to Keep Them. [ARTICLE]

Heusehold Ice-Chests and How to Keep Them.

In refrigerating apparatus for domestic use, of course, we stand pre-emi-nent. But we have arrived at our present form of appliance only by slow and gradual ebanges. The most noted improvement of late years in ice-chests ias been that the food to be preserved is no longer in immediate contact with the ice. The reasons are very numerous why food should not be in imme(Uate juxtaposition with ice. We will only qite two of them. Immediate contact wastes the ice, which, in continuous melting, washes out, more or less, the savor of the food. The best form, then, of the apparatus is where the ice is placed in a chamber apart from the food, and the temperature is reduced by radiation. One thing which is often overlooked by the housekeeper is that some small amount of ventilation in certain periods of refrigeration is necessary. Such exhalations as come from bieat or fish, the soluble compounds being carried away by vapor, invariably condense in the first stages of cooling. Very careful housekeepers, when meat is first put in the ice-chest, do not close down the lid of the safe too tight. T here is some small waste of the ice, but when the proper time has come and the chest is closed, there is improvement in the flavor of the meat. It is exceedingly wasteful, under the ordinary conditions of the old-fashioned ice-chest, not to envelope the ice in some woolen cover, such as a common blanket. In the newer apparatus, where there is no immediate contact, it is still much more economical to blanket the ice. The trouble, of course, is that when ice is wanted to cool water, the contents of the sjtfe have to bo disturbed. Even in economical families, where an expense of over fifty cents a week for ice is not allowed by the paucity of the budget, after the first outlay for an ice-cooler is made, its purchase will be paid two or three times over in the summer by the saving of the extra cost of ice. Nothing requires greater care, hicre constant solicitude than an ice-chest- As has been stated, tho cooling process precipitates those compounds which are found iu the aqueous vapor. A careless person will buy ice lavishly for the ice-chest, and-will still have a most unsavory receptacle for food. At least twice a Week the ice-box should be cleansed, by wiping it out with fresh water in wolptbi and giving it, at tho end of thorough scrubbing. Thero are certain things, such as milk, which are Very susceptible of taint, and will take not only an odor but tlflMistinct taste from other food. Fish, ravvj or even cooked, is very apt, even under the most favorable circumstances, to Impart its peculiar flavor. A hot dish ougjit never to be put into an ice-chest. This niay occur when It is necessary to preparir food be eaten cold, such as a pudding, a salad, or mayonnaise. In this case, cool down the dish in cold water just before plac-

lag in the chest, or evon ice it separate, though the expense of ice be increased. Metal slats in ice-chhsts, evon if they be of galvanized iron or zinz, may bo quite well replaced by wooden slats. can do moved about, so as to hold dishes witji food, and, what is better, can be thoroughly scrubbed. Uncooked food is best placed in a dish in an ice-chest. It can be more readily moved, and is less likely to be mixed up with other food. There are two methods of having ico served, either by a daily quantity by weight, or contracting with the iceman to keep the supply up during the week, indifferent as to weather. The latter, with some slight increase of cost, has its advantages. Of course, there never is any method, save by actual weighing the ioe, by which the certainty can be arrived at that the housekeeper gets all the ice paid for. The contract system simplifies this. The honor of the ice-man may be said, however, under all conditions, to be very problematic of its kind. Refrigerating processes on a grand scale are seen at their best in New York City where fish are preserved. Briefly described, “a freeze! ” is a lh,rgu double chamber, the walls betweeil being filled with ice. A better form is where ckst-iron cylinders of considerable diameter pass through the chamber, which columns are tilled with ice. Great excess of cold in keeping food deteriorates its quality. With anjptatense lowering of temperature animal tissue is disintegrated and quite an appreciable difference in taste occurs. When the meat is thawed out it is soft, and all its elasticity of fiber is gone. The old idea that a leg of mutton was better when it was frozen and thawed and frozen and thawed is absurd. We are not yet quite sure that ceitain very peculiar mechanical transformation in the fatty tissue of meat does not take place by great cold. St. Petersburg meat, which is frozen, is very poor meat. Butchers in New York, in their and their shipments of mcajt abroad, are exceedingly careful that the temperature shall be considerably above the freezing point. The laws governing temperatures; ''Or rather the methods of preserving these temperatures, though simple enough, are rarely understood by persons intelligent in other respects. One law is that the same methods or appliances which keep in the heat keep in the cold. It may be very theoretical, but just as there are methods purposed to heat houses on a large scale, the caloric to be distributed from one common center, so is it possible that there could be copstructed in the midst of a block of houses or the quarter of a city an apparatus which would refrigerate all the food in the adjacent houses, It is, of course, questionable as yet whether refrigerating machines of ice-making machines may supplant in our lats tude the natural product of our frozen rivers. The applications of science to this subject have, however, very much simplified these processes, and, as far as economy goes, there are to-day many Southern cities which use only such ice as is made artificially. — N. ¥. Times.