QUIZ: This 1950s Home Economics Quiz is Authentic

White distilled vinegar has little taste and is a thin, clear liquid, making it perfect for cleaning your house. Flavored vinegars like malt, balsamic, and apple cider vinegar might leave discoloration and odd smells behind. Plus, you don’t want to waste more expensive vinegars by using them to do the dishes!

To julienne is to prepare food by cutting it into thin strips that’s about an eighth of an inch wide. It is also known as a French cut and is often made using a culinary knife.

Bundt cakes are made using Bundt pans, which are shaped like large doughnuts. The Bundt pan was popularized in the 1950s and 1960s due to publicity from Pillsbury and today it is estimated that over 60 million Bundt pans have been sold across North America.

Keeping shirts buttoned while washing can cause unnecessary wear and stress on the buttons themselves, which could cause them to fall off. This could also cause parts of the shirt to go unwashed, which isn't the best way to keep your clothes clean.

There are 128 fluid ounces in a gallon, which is handy to know if you want a more precise measurement for your recipes. It's also helpful to know that there are 8 fluid ounces in a cup and 32 fluid ounces in a quart.

Soufflés are made of a sweet cream sauce as a base, which is mixed with egg whites that have been beaten to soft peaks. The base provides flavor while the egg whites “lift” the mixture, causing it to become puffy. But soufflés can fall if they are not made correctly, making them look flat and less appetizing.

Food mills can be used to mash, grind, puree and strain soft foods like tomatoes, boiled potatoes or garbanzo beans. They are best used to make tomato sauce, mashed potatoes or fruit purees.

A lattice is a framework of structured strips, like a lattice fence or gate. Similarly, a pie can also have a lattice made of crust that can bake into a golden brown delight, while still giving you enough space to see the fruit below!

Pressure cookers are known for their quick abilities to cook foods like vegetables, meat and even eggs. But don't forget to factor in the time that the machine takes to pressurize and depressurize.

It's good to give your guests at least a week to respond to your requests, but it's better to give them 10 days notice if possible. Letting your guests know about plans long before the event itself could also be negative, because your guests could forget.

An open jar of peanut butter stays fresh for about three months in a cool, dark pantry, which is more than enough time for most peanut butter lovers to consume it. On the other hand, placing it in the fridge prevents oil separation but can make the peanut butter rock-hard.

Topstich is a sewing technique where the stitching line is designed to be seen from the outside of a garment either for functional or decorative purposes like the topstitching of the back pockets of your jeans.

Instead of buttering the entire slice, simply tear off a bite-size piece of bread. Hold the piece with your fingers and use the knife to butter it. Then repeat with the remaining pieces of bread.

Crystal and glassware should always go first. Otherwise, you'll end up making them greasy and dirty if you wash your pots and pans first. And make sure to drain the dishwater tub and rinse only six pieces of dishware at a time using hot water from the tap.

Although egg shells have a micro membrane coating called bloom to keep the inside safe from microbes and pollutants, there is the potential for bacteria to form on the surface of an egg. So, you should always wash it first.

Regardless of what side of the iron you use, you should dampen the linen shirt with a spray bottle of water. When you pass the hot iron over the clothes, it will create a good quality steam that will get rid of wrinkles.

A trivet is an object placed between a bowl or serving dish and the dining table to protect the table or the tablecloth from possible heat damage.

Baby formula should always be body temperature, meaning it should either feel warm or cool, but not hot. So, if you test the temperature of the formula on the inside of your wrist and it burns, then wait for it to cool before feeding your child.

Breakfast breaks the overnight fasting period and replenishes your body’s supply of glucose to boost your energy levels while providing you with the necessary nutrients required to maintain your overall health.

When sewing, you must first create an anchor point. This allows you to keep the thread from pulling out of your first stitches without having a knot or a bulky section of thread.

While it’s more commonly referred to as a tbsp in a lot of cookbooks and online recipes, it is also referred to as a capital “T”. It can also be referred to as a dessertspoon as well.

Spraying your clothes with starch allows the iron to glide faster and sets the fabric so you don’t have to iron your clothes over the same area over and over again.

A roux consists of flour and butter that’s cooked on a stove top and blended until it becomes smooth and brown. The roux is then used to thicken sauces. But some cooks might choose to replace the butter with bacon drippings or lard.

The salt pulls the mucus out of the swollen, inflamed tissue and helps relieve the discomfort. It also helps sooth a scratchy throat. So, combine 1/2 to 1/4 teaspoon of table salt with 8 ounce of warm water next time your throat starts to hurt.

Smoke detectors should be tested at regular intervals, preferably once a month. To test it, all you have to do is press and hold the “test” button for a second. The smoke alarm will begin to beep, but if it doesn’t then you should change the battery and test it again.

Children at this age typically go to bed around 8 or 9 p.m. and wake up anywhere between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. Children who get an adequate amount of sleep have improved behavior, learning, memory, attention and overall mental and physical health.

To calculate the unit price, divide the cost of the product by the quantity you’re getting or check the shelf label. Then, compare the unit prices of 2 or more packages of the same product to see which has the better value.

The flash point is the point where little flames start to dance on the surface of the oil. This occurs around 600°F and it doesn’t take long for fat to reach this point after reaching its smoke point.

Mix one cup of bleach in a gallon of water and apply to the surface of the area where the mold is. You can also add some dish soap to the mix to help the bleach penetrate porous surfaces. Then rinse.

When washing, it’s important to separate your light, dark and medium clothes as highly saturated color clothes will likely bleed in the washer, especially if you’re washing them for the first time.

Consider serving salad on individual plates and make sure that the ingredients are fresh and that their appearance is appetizing to the eyes as well as the stomach.

Spray the pull tab and the surrounding zipper teeth with glass cleaner with just one pump. Wait a moment for the liquid to work on whatever residue that’s causing the zipper to stick. Then, move the zipper back and forth along the teeth gently until it frees itself.

Salmonella has a way of sneaking its way into chicken when its improperly handled or stored raw. The best way to prevent this is to cook the chicken to 165 degrees Fahrenheit and also washing your hands with warm water and soap for 20 seconds before touching anything else.

A gallon is the same as 16 cups, 8 pints or 4 quarts and is considered the largest liquid measurement. To convert gallons to cups, you can multiply the gallon value by 16, which makes this an easy measuring solution until you get a new measuring cup.

Opening a window as soon as you wake up is a great practice because it not only gets you out of bed to make you feel awake, but it also gives you a breath of fresh air, which is much needed after a long night of sleep.

Toilets are known for harboring dangerous bacteria, which when left uncleaned could cause serious illnesses. It's best to clean the most used parts of toilets everyday to keep this bacteria at bay.

It may feel good to let dishes pile up in the sink, but doing so could cause mold and other harmful things to grow on them, which could harm your health. So cleaning the sink every time you do a load of dishes is the way to go.

If your table is cluttered with old newspapers, dirty dishes and yesterday's breakfast, there's a good chance that your guests will treat your dining room like a dumping ground! So clean up your space if you want people to help you keep it clean.

At formal dinner parties, the host or hostess should dictate when the party begins and ends their meal, so it is best practice to not begin eating or sit at the table before the host has done so.

If everyone enters their chair from the same side, it saves each guest some awkward encounters like bumping into another dinner guest on their way into their seat.

Sifting means putting through a sieve to remove large particles, and in baking, typically only dry ingredients like flour and sugar are sifted.

To baste means to pour juices or melted fat over meat during cooking in order to keep it moist. Some of the liquids you can use to baste a chicken can include butter, a marinade or the juices of the bird itself.

Upside-down cake is a cake that is baked in a single pan with its toppings cooked at the bottom of the ban. When it is removed from the oven, the cake is flipped upside down to serve. Fruit such as pineapple, apple, cherry and peach are common toppings for upside-down cakes.

This rule goes for most foods! If you cut potatoes in varying sizes, you risk some pieces getting overdone while others aren’t finished yet, so cooking veggies and meat by cutting them in similarly sized pieces is the way to go.

In some countries such as Ireland and the U.K., hoover is the word used to mean vacuum. This term came from the Hoover Company, one of the first and most known companies who developed the vacuum cleaner. But in other areas, vacuum cleaners are called sweepers.

Lemon juice helps break down the oils and bacteria in sweat that causes it to stain clothes. Wine and ketchup should not be used, because they can cause further stains to clothing, while water can help clean clothes but not remove stains.

Instead of wasting energy by waiting for your iron to get hot, utilize your time wisely by ironing clothes that need a lower heat setting first, and moving up to clothes that need a higher heat setting after.

Copper can be cleaned using ketchup because the tomatoes in the popular sauce have a high acid content, which can remove discoloration from the famously hard to clean metal.

Bread should be kept at room temperature to keep its texture palatable. Keeping it in a box keeps some of the moisture inside the bread, but be careful not to leave a loaf in a bread box for more than a week, or it could start to get moldy.

Clothespins have lots of uses, but they were originally designed to keep clothes on a clothesline to dry using nothing but the sun’s rays. Today most people have a clothes drier for this purpose, but the sun is still an effective way of keeping your clothes crisp and dry.

Mallets for meat tenderizing can be made of wood or metal and they get the job done by poking tiny holes in meat so that when it is cooking, more fat can get into these tiny crevices and make the meat more tender, as if it had more fat marbling to begin with.

To cook a steak, first get your pan very hot. Then place the raw steak in the pan with some type of fat and some aromatics if you prefer. Then wait as the steak cooks on one side before flipping it to the other. In just a few minutes you’ll have a perfectly cooked steak that is still medium rare in the middle.

Whipped egg whites have a high air content, so beating them too quickly into batter will flatten them and cause the air to escape. To maintain their fluffiness, slowly and carefully fold egg whites into batter until they are just incorporated.

To prefer a sheet test for syrup or jelly, dip a cool metal spoon into the boiling mixture and lift the spoon so the mixture runs off the side. If the mixture isn’t ready yet, the syrup will drip off the spoon in droplets. When the syrup is ready, the mixture won’t drip but will “sheet” off of the spoon in ribbons instead of droplets.

Ecology is the study of relationships between living organisms and their physical environment, so studying the relationship between humans and their kitchens is similar to studying the relationship between frogs and a creek or fish and the ocean.

Vegetables provide humans with enough fiber to be able to digest other foods, as well as vital nutrients such as potassium, folic acid, vitamin A and vitamin C. Vegetables are also an important part of keeping blood cholesterol levels down, which can help fight heart disease.

To cook something “al forno” means to cook it in the oven. Some dishes that are cooked al forno include lasagna and pizza. Pasta is sometimes boiled before it is baked. Other ways to cook pasta include “al dente” which means cooking it until it is firm, not too soft.

Microwave ovens use electromagnetic radiation to heat food. The cooking device was produced after World War II and the first machine to use this technology, called the “Radarange,” was sold in 1946. But commercial microwaves weren’t manufactured until 1961, and it was in the 1970s that low cost models became popular in homes.

Coffee tables are often put in a room to inspire conversation between guests and writing things down can stall conversations or alienate guests, so it’s best to keep notepads in your bedroom or office and put conversation starters like photos or art on your coffee table.

To budget your life using the 50/30/20 method, divide your expenses into needs; like rent, utilities, and food, then wants; like outings, restaurants, and electronics, and then put the rest of your income into a savings account that won’t be touched.