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PECTORAL BROTH (Invalid Cookery)
Cut a chicken into joints and put them into a stewpan, with two pints of cold spring water, a fresh lettuce finely shredded, three ounces of prepared Iceland moss, a dessert-spoonful of gum-arabic, a sprig of burrage, two or three sprigs of chervil, and a small pinch of salt and pepper. Bring the liquid gently to a boil, stirring it occasionally, then draw the saucepan to the side and let its contents simmer gently for an hour. Strain the broth, add a little more salt if required, and serve either hot or cold as a jelly. The flesh of the bird may be made into a chicken panada (see CHICKEN PANADA). The above is good for consumptive persons. Probable cost, 3s. Sufficient for one person.
A thin restorative chicken broth from the invalid-cookery chapter, thickened with two gelling agents that have largely left the domestic kitchen. It works as written, provided you can source the Iceland moss and gum arabic.
- Imperial measuresTwo Imperial pints is 40 fl oz, or a little under 5 US cups. Three ounces of dried Iceland moss is a very large volume of loose lichen.
- BurrageAn old spelling of borage, Borago officinalis. A sprig means leaves and stem; the leaves are hairy and cucumber-scented and give the broth a faint green freshness. Omit it rather than substitute if you cannot get it, or use a few cucumber peelings.
- Prepared Iceland mossCetraria islandica, a lichen sold dried through herb suppliers. "Prepared" is the operative word: it carries bitter lichen acids and must be soaked and rinsed in several changes of water, sometimes with a pinch of soda, then drained, before it will taste of anything but medicine. Unprepared moss will make the broth unpleasantly bitter.
- Gum-arabicPowdered acacia gum, still sold as a food thickener and as an ingredient for confectioners. A dessertspoonful is about two teaspoons. Sprinkle it over the surface and stir rather than dumping it in, or it will clump.
- Drawing the pan to the sideOn a coal range this meant moving the pan off the hot plate to a cooler edge. On a modern hob it means the lowest setting you have, with the surface barely trembling. A true boil will cloud the broth and toughen the chicken you intend to use for panada.
- The chickenUse bone-in joints, skin on. The gel of the finished jelly comes as much from the collagen in the joints as from the moss and gum, so a boneless breast will give you seasoned water.
- Yield and servingThe original claims enough for one invalid, which is probably a day's portions rather than a single bowl. You will lose some liquid to evaporation and some to the moss, so expect appreciably less than the 40 fl oz you started with. Chill it to see whether it sets; if it does not, it is still perfectly good hot.
- The medical claim"Good for consumptive persons" reflects Victorian belief about pulmonary tuberculosis, not any established property of the ingredients. Treat this as a light, mildly mucilaginous broth.
Nineteenth-century cookery books nearly all carried an invalid-cookery section, and its recipes are built on two assumptions: that a sick person could digest little, and that nourishment came chiefly from broth and jelly. "Pectoral" simply means relating to the chest, and pectoral preparations were sold and made for coughs and consumption throughout the century. The distinctive ingredients here are both demulcents, valued because they coat and soothe: gum arabic, the dried sap of acacia trees traded out of Sudan and Senegal since antiquity and long a staple of the pharmacist's counter as well as the confectioner's, and Iceland moss, a lichen eaten as famine food in Iceland and Scandinavia and adopted by European medicine as a chest remedy. Borage and chervil belong to the same tradition of cooling, blood-cleansing herbs. The stated cost of three shillings is high for a single invalid's meal, which tells you something about who was expected to be nursed this way.