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Cookery

THE French ideal of a perfect cook is that he shall exactly understand the nature and properties of the substances which he employs, so that he may correct, or improve, such aliments as nature presents in a raw state. He must have a sound head, a sure taste, a delicate palate, and must never forget that seasoning is the rock on which indifferent cooks make shipwreck." This is to say, that in the sublime culinary art, sense, tact, and experience are better than the learning which only exhibits, and sometimes defeats itself, in over-elaboration, and costly excess. President Loubet, at the Culinary Show in Paris (1902), said to the assembled chefs, and scullions : "France is famous all over the world for her literature, her arts, and her Cookery. Thanks to French Cookery, plebeians like you, and me receive crowned heads at our tables. Continue, then, to be good cooks: attend well to your sauces, and devote to them all your talent, so that they in return may heap honour upon yourselves." "The man," said Brillat Savarin, "who invents a new plat is a greater benefactor to the human race than the man who discovers a new planet." But a natural aptitude for the art of cooking must be possessed-" On peut devenir fruitier ; on est né rotisseur."

In the time of our Queen Elizabeth the red-nosed cook ruled omnipotent in big kitchens; his sceptre was a rolling-pin, a case of knives swung at his side, and chests of spices were his crown jewels. Local dishes were then strictly retained. Devonshire had its white pot, and clouted cream; Cornwall its herring, and pilchard pies; Hampshire was renowned for its honey; and Gloucestershire for its lampreys. In 1750 the first public Restaurant was founded in France at Paris by a cook named Boulanger, over whose shop and dining rooms was displayed the Latin inscription, Venite omnes qui stomacho laboratis, et ego restaurabo vos "Come to me all you who are hungry, and I will restore you to comfort." دو 66 Broadly speaking, it may be said that most forms of cooking actually lessen the digestibility of animal foods, and increase that of vegetable foods. Moreover, it is found by doctors that many sick persons can take raw, or much underdone meats more easily than other forms of nutriment. The general effect of cooking on the structure of meat is to lessen the consistence of its fibres by converting into soft gelatin the hitherto firm connective tissue which holds them together, also to remove fat by melting it down; the chief result of cooking on meat is to diminish its amount of water. That meat is rendered less digestible in proportion to the degree of cooking which it receives, is shown by the ascertained fact that three and a half ounces of beef, when eaten raw, disappear completely from the stomach in two hours, whereas when half-boiled the meat has not disappeared until at the end of two and a half hours, nor when wholly boiled until three hours have expired; when half-roasted it takes three hours to undergo digestion in the stomach, and when wholly roasted four hours. "Raw flesh," says Brillat Savarin, "though it sticks to the teeth, is not at all unpleasant to the taste; seasoned with a little salt it is readily digested, and is certainly as nourishing as in any other form.' The effect of heat on the albuminous parts (proteids) of foods is to coagulate them, this being effected at about a temperature of 170° Fahrt., or 42° below the boiling point. If the degree of heat employed in cooking goes beyond this, the value of the food is lessened by the hardening, and shrinking of the albuminous materials; the importance of which fact in its practical application to cooking has long been recognized, though commonly neglected, or disregarded in effect. In the cooking of vegetables the moist heat of the water, raised to nearly, or quite boiling point, swells up the starch grains, and ruptures their surrounding envelopes, so that the invading water makes a paste with the escaping starch, or a form of starch jelly. If green vegetables are cooked in any excess of water, their bulk is reduced, and their valuable mineral salts become dissolved away; so that in this manner their nutritive value is considerably lessened, though perhaps their digestibility may be enhanced; but their chief worth as food lies in their undiminished bulk, and in their mineral salts. When a cabbage, or carrot, or potato, is boiled, a large proportion of the soluble potash salts pass from the vegetable tissue into the water, which is generally poured away, and with it the precious elixir which is the true preventive of gout, rheumatism, lumbago, and rheumatic neuralgia. The French housewife's method of cooking vegetables is far more sensible, and excellent : by her the quantity of water used is so nicely measured as not to require any abstraction, but it forms a sort of emulsion of the juices with the oil, or fat, which she always adds at the right time, and in proper proportion. Vegetables should never be salted until they are nearly cooked, else they will be hardened by this addition. It is interesting to know that the advantages of slow cooking are well recognized by some savage tribes; and in this respect the civilized cook has something to learn from them. For instance, the following is the method of cooking practised by the Kanakas, of the Friendly Islands: "A hole is scooped in the earth, and a fire is made therein with wood, and kept burning until a fair-sized heap of glowing charcoal remains. Pebbles are then thrown in until the charcoal is covered. Whatever is to be cooked is enveloped in leaves, then placed upon the pebbles, and more leaves heaped upon it. The earth is next thrown back into the cavity, and stamped well down. A long time is, of course, needed for the viands to become cooked through, but so subtle is the mode that to overdo anything is almost an impossibility. A couple of days may pass from the time of 'putting down' the joint, yet when it is dug up it will be smoking hot, retaining all its juices, tender as jelly, yet withal as full of flavour as it is possible for cooked meat to be. No matter how large the joint is, or how tough the meat, this gentle suasion will render it succulent, and tasty; and no form of civilized cookery can in the least compare with it. No better illustration of the advantages of slow cooking could well be found" (Hutchison, Cruise of the Cachalot). "We must bear in mind," as Sir Wm. Roberts has taught, "that among civilized races the preparation of food for the table is carried to a high degree of practical effect. The cereal grains, for example, which are employed for making bread, are first finely ground, and sifted from the bran by the miller; the flour is subjected, with the aid of moisture, and artificial heat, to a cooking process; the meats and fish we eat are boiled, or roasted; the vegetables we use are carefully deprived of their coarser parts, and are then boiled. All this preliminary preparation and cooking, serve to make the food more capable of being thoroughly exhausted of its nutritive qualities. Even as it is, some waste occurs, and the fæces always retain considerable elements of undigested food. But it is obvious that if food be rendered too easy of digestion, there arises a risk that the nutriment will pass unduly quick, and wastefully, into the blood, and on through the tissues into the excretory organs; so likewise out of the body before this food has been made fully and economically available for the completion of the slow nutritive processes. Moreover, a sudden irruption into the blood of large quantities of newly-digested aliment would tend to disturb the chemical balance of that fluid, and thus interfere with the tranquil performance of its functions. A too rapid digestion and absorption of food may be compared to feeding a fire with straw, instead of with slower burning coal. Thus is it also with human digestion, our highly-prepared and highly-cooked food requires in those persons who are healthy, and vigorous, that the digestive fires shall be damped down in order to ensure the economical use of food; a slow digestion being quite a different thing from an imperfect digestion. The practice of the Irish peasant to underboil his potato so as to 'leave a stone,' as it is said, 'in the middle of it,' and the practice of the Scotch peasant to underboil his oatmeal, making his brose by simply pouring boiling water on the mealboth these processes are designed to enable the meal to stay the stomach for a sufficiently long period."

Admirers of the Jewish mode of cooking claim for this a great wholesomeness, and adaptability to a weak digestion; and it is certainly worthy of note that Christian children do not compare favourably with the Jewish in healthiness, longevity, and the power to resist disease. Their (Jewish) meat is most minutely inspected to ensure its cleanliness, and healthiness; its slaughterer must be a practised hand, and make use only of the keenest weapons, as any bruising, or lacerating of the wound inflicted, renders the meat unfit for consumption. When forming combinations of their food they never mix milk, or its products, with meat; to do which would be regarded by them as a breach of the precept, "Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's milk;" the principle being that food killed by violence shall not be mixed with that which is rendered up peaceably; such a mixture is an abomination! Some persons who suffer from faulty digestion, having tried the Jewish system, affirm that it suits them much better, because mixed foods are disallowed ; so that healthier blood is made, and the whole vital system is purer (A. Blyth, 1884). Also, by the Jews a strict examination of the animal slaughtered for food is made straightway after its death, with the view of discovering whether anything was amiss with its condition of health before it was killed; and many are the laws, and tests laid down by the Rabbis to this end, which is not by any means a mere formality. Thus, of the 21,000 sheep which were slain in the second half year of 1900, no fewer than 6,000 were rejected as not wholly sound, and therefore not "kosher"; and the same strict precautions are taken with respect to other animals. "But what becomes of all these rejected animals?" asked a representative of Cassell's Journal. "Oh," was the reply, "they are bought up by the Gentiles, and eaten by them!"

That man is essentially a cooking animal, is a fact borne out by the knowledge that cooking utensils have been discovered wherever human life has been found to have existed. We all believe that fingers were made before forks; but it is not generally known that forks were in the first place constructed to imitate fingers-originally by the Romans with two prongs, as the finger and thumb, then as three fingers, and later on as the whole hand. The English people are indebted to one Tom Coryat for introducing the fork amongst them, because of which boon he was given the sobriquet "Furcifer:" Furca, being really a pitchfork. ("Expellas naturam furcâ : tamen usque recurret.") Not until some time after the Restoration were forks in general English use. About Pepys' time each guest at table was expected to bring his own spoon and fork to a meal, and to use it throughout without change. During the sixteenth century, at a man of position's table plates could not be provided for all who sat down to the meal; and the original trencher was a thick slice of bread on which the meat was placed, and which after being so used was given to the poor. And even as lately as at the beginning of the last century (1810) a bowl of coloured glass containing water was placed before each guest, at the end of dinner, and the women as well as the men stooped over it, sucked up some of the water, rinsed out the mouth, and swilled the water back again into the bowl. Such behaviour represented the extreme of table refinement amongst our most cultivated persons less than a hundred years ago. There is Biblical authority for telling how men, in ancient days, used to wipe the dishes (2 Kings xxi. 13) : "And I will wipe Jerusalem as a man wipeth a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down." This would seem to show that of old the kitchen was not exclusively woman's kingdom.

Lately a spirited comparison between English and American Cookery has been made in some of our leading journals. In Brooklyn Life, thus recently sang an unfortunate husband over the water :- "She's joined a class, and learn't to cook, Oh! woe! oh! deepest woe!

She gets it out of a terrible book, And her biscuits eat like dough, Like dough, And her biscuits eat like dough !

I have to smile, and swallow her pies:

Oh! would that I were dead!

Her puddings boiled are a sad surprise, And I can't describe her bread, Her bread, And I can't describe her bread!

Poor little woman! She does her best To make me a happy man:

But I wish she'd love me, and leave the rest To our good old Mary Ann, 'ry Ann, To our good old Mary Ann."

In the St. James' Gazette (June, 1902) Marie Louise, the Belgian wife of an Englishman, asks: "Will England ever get its daughters to understand that Cooking is an Art (with a capital A), and a most interesting and pleasurable Art if properly taught and practised? Alas! I doubt if things will ever alter in such respect, for English girls are not built that way; no matter of which class-upper, middle, or lowerthey are not eager to learn, and therefore it is not only the Americans who are the sufferers here, but England's own children become weaker and weaker every generation through that dire malady, indigestion." Dickens lets us know that in his day things were different: "Mr. Pickwick's landlady in Goswell Street was a comely woman, of bustling manners, and agreeable appearance, with a natural genius for cooking, improved by study, and long practice, into an exquisite talent." Nowadays, as quoth the Art of Cookery (1708) :- "The gentry take their cooks, tho' never tryed; It seems no more to these than 'up, and ride.'" Henry the Eighth of England rewarded his cook by the gift of a manor for having composed a pudding of special merit. What a contrast do the following lines, pathetically true, present to-day :- "A woman there was, and she wrote for the press, (As you, or I might do), She told how to cut, and fit a dress, And how to stew many a savoury mess; But she never had done it herself, I guess ! (Which none of her readers knew!) Oh! the hours we spent, and the flour we spent, And the sugar we wasted like sand, At the 'hest of a woman who never had cooked, (And now we know she never could cook, And never did understand!) The frugal repast which Horace, the Roman Poet, provided for a neighbour whom he had invited, or for a guest whom rough times had constrained to seek a refuge with him, consisted, not of rare fishes procured from the city, but, more sensibly, of a fine pullet, and a plump kid, with dessert to follow, of grapes, figs, and nuts. "At mihi cum longum post tempus venerat hospes, Sive operum vacuo longum conviva per imbrem Vicinus, bene erat, non piscibus urbe petitis, Sed pullo, atque hædo; cum pensilis uva secundas, Et nux ornabat mensas cum duplice ficu."

It is to be noted that the object aimed at in cooking food is twofold: First, from an æsthetic point of view, to improve its appearance when it comes to table, and to develop in it new flavours; second, with a hygienic purpose, to partially sterilize the food, thereby enabling it to remain longer sweet, and good. No animal parasite found in meat is capable of withstanding a temperature of 70° Centigrade (158° Fahrt), therefore all ordinary forms of cooking will render meat free from this source of infection. Stewing is in many respects the ideal method for cooking meat; it coagulates the proteids without over-hardening them, whilst none of the flavouring ingredients are lost, seeing that the juice is eaten with the meat. But it is a mistake to suppose that cooking increases the digestibility of all foods; this is true only with respect to vegetable foods; that of animal viands is, as already stated, diminished rather than increased by cooking. 5 "The fundamental principle of all Is what ingenious books the relish call.

For, when the market sends in loads of food, 'Tis this in nice perfection makes it good." "Before each meal is served, or after it has been cooked, and eaten, the housewife," so a recent American authority teaches, "should add up the different amounts of proteid, fat, and carbohydrates found in the food! Computing cards should be put into requisition at each meal; then when the day is over you can find out whether you have taken too much of one kind of food, or not enough of another." With reference to this new scientific device the Chicago Tribune humorously puts the matter thus :- "Mother's slow at figures, but she always has to count The proteids, to make sure we receive the right amount; She keeps a pad of paper, and a pencil, near the sink, And estimates our victuals-all the things we eat, and drink; She lists our carbohydrates, and she scribbles down the fat, And our specific gravity-she closely watches that.

Mother's slow at figures, so our breakfast's always late; The proteids, and the hydrates make the task for her too great; We never get a luncheon, since she figures on till noon, And finds we've overdone it, and that nearly makes her swoon; Mother's always tabulating every pennyweight we eat ; Except the meals we smuggle from the cook-shop down the street. down the street.