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Marrow from Animal Bones (It increaseth the geniture)
it increaseth the geniture, and excellently sustaineth, and restoreth the vitall moisture. Moreover, it mollifieth the passages of the throat, and lenifieth the asperitie of it, and delighteth the stomacke, so that it be moderately taken; but if it be immoderately used, it mollifieth and relaxeth the stomacke, taketh away the appetite, and induceth a disposition to vomit." Within the last few years our modern physicians have likewise learnt that animal marrow possesses special reparative powers for ailing and weakly persons who lack spinal strength, and red blood. Physiologists now teach that the red marrow within the flat bones is undeniably the birth-place of the red blood corpuscles as regards ourselves, and they make use of such red marrow from sound animals, freshly killed, for administering to bloodless patients, so as to stimulate their fresh blood formation. The animal marrow further contains some iron in a natural state, and fat in an easily assimilated form. Rapid improvement has been obtained for children by giving red bone marrow in rickets, spinal curvature, and diseases of the bones. Sheep's marrow includes less solid fat, and more liquid fat than that of the ox. The marrow of bones is esteemed as a luxury even among savages. North American Indians hold it in high respect. They roast the round bones of the buffalo, elk, moose, and the deer, on the coals, then split these bones with a stone hatchet, and sometimes a wedge is driven in between the condyles. The marrow is scooped out with a rough wooden spoon, and eaten on the instant by the members of the party seated around the camp fire. Moreover, during the hunting season, marrow is collected by them in quantity for storing, and is packed in bladders, together with other marrow from the spinal bones. Likewise, among the Laplanders, and the Greenlanders, marrow, still warm from the natural heat of a freshly-slaughtered animal, is considered a supreme delicacy, and the dish of honour to be set before distinguished strangers.
Among Secrets in Physick and Chirurgery (1653) by the Right Honourable Countesse of Kent, there is given as " a strengthening meat: take potato roots, roast them, or bake them, then pill them, and slice them into a dish; put to it lumps of raw marrow, and a few currants, also a little whole mace, and sweeten it with sugar to your taste, and so eat it instead of buttered parsnips." In the Arcana Fairfaxiana Manuscripta, nearly three centuries old, is ordered "a caudle to strengthen ye backe." "Take ye pith of an oxe-back, a good quantity. Wash it, clean, and dry it; take ye skinne off, and beat it, and strain it with wine, or ale; take two spoonfuls of oatmeal searced (sifted), and juice of comfer (comfrey), and clary, knottgrass and plantain; take half a pinte of their juice, ye yolkes of two egges; make it in ye form of a caudle. Season it with cinnamon, and nutmeg, and sugar." Cooks of to-day find that the distinguishing virtues of marrow on toast are emphasized by adding a few drops of the best anchovy sauce. Beef marrow remains fluid at a lower temperature than any of the ordinary animal fats, so that it is more readily absorbed into the system as nutritive food. Recently there has been introduced by the manufacturing chemists an excellent combination of red bone marrow, malt extract, fresh eggs, including the shells for their lime salts, and fresh lemon-juice. In the seventeenth century the Restoration of the Royalty after the end of the Commonwealth, brought with it a revival of French cookery, under the guidance of Giles Rose, chief cook to Charles II. He restored marrow pies, and bacon tarts, but only for a short time, since when they have disappeared. The modern way for obtaining marrow dietetically is to take a split beef marrow bone, remove the marrow, and put this into a stewpan with enough cold water to cover it; add a little salt, and just scald it; next take it up, and cut it through into nice thick slices about a quarter of an inch thick; the marrow thus prepared may then be used for cooking, or other service. Quite lately a claim for bone marrow (as chemically myocene) is advanced by certain doctors, to be employed towards curing middle-ear deafness, such marrow being antiseptic, and "an internal secretion of vital importance to the economy." It is said to be powerfully remedial against the injurious action of various bacteria which invade, and become morbidly active within the body, and set up mischief such as the deafness in question, if a deficiency of this internal secretion occurs. bone-marrow oil is likewise to be employed topically within the ear, together with the use of gentle massage.
The MARROW, VEGETABLE, Cucurbita ovifera, (See VEGETABLES).
Three preparations are embedded in this essay: a Restoration-era dish of roast potato with raw marrow, a seventeenth-century "caudle" made from the pith of an ox's back, and the author's own method of scalding marrow from a split bone. All three fail on modern grounds, and the notes below explain the specific reasons rather than offering substitutes.
- Ox-back pith is spinal cordThe "pith of an oxe-back" in the Fairfaxiana caudle is bovine spinal cord. Since the BSE controls of the 1990s, the spinal cord and vertebral column of cattle above a specified age are classed as specified risk material in the UK, the EU and elsewhere, and are excluded from the human food chain outright. It is not a matter of cooking it longer; the tissue may not lawfully be sold for eating.
- Comfrey is no longer taken internallyThe same caudle calls for the juice of "comfer" (comfrey, Symphytum officinale). Comfrey contains pyrrolizidine alkaloids, which are hepatotoxic and associated with veno-occlusive liver disease. Internal comfrey products have been withdrawn or restricted in Germany, the UK and the US from the late twentieth century onward, with the main restrictions falling in the 1990s and, in the US, in 2001.
- Raw marrow in the Countess of Kent's dishThe potato dish adds "lumps of raw marrow" to sliced roast potato with no further cooking specified. Marrow is not sterile, and the raw fat is never brought anywhere near a temperature that would deal with Salmonella, E. coli or Listeria carried on the cut bone.
- "Just scald it" is not cookingThe author's own method covers the extracted marrow with cold water, salts it, and scalds it only, then slices it a quarter of an inch thick to be "used for cooking, or other service". No temperature or cooking time is stated at any point, and a scald alone cannot be relied on to bring the marrow to a safe internal temperature.
- The medical claims are obsoleteRed marrow is indeed where red cells are made, but eating it does not transfer that function. Feeding raw marrow for rickets, spinal curvature or "middle-ear deafness" reflects the organotherapy fashion of around 1900, in which an organ was thought to treat the corresponding organ. Rickets is vitamin D deficiency; the marrow's small iron content is not a treatment for anaemia. "Myocene" is not a recognised substance.
- Bone-marrow oil in the earThe instruction to put marrow oil into the ear canal has no basis and risks introducing bacteria and fat into an ear that may have a perforated drum. Nothing should be instilled into an ear on this authority.
- Reading the old termsFor interest rather than use: pill is peel, searced is sifted through a fine sieve, and a caudle is a warm thickened drink of ale or wine bound with egg yolk and oatmeal, given to invalids and to women after childbirth. In later British usage a half-pint is the imperial ten fluid ounces rather than eight, though a seventeenth-century manuscript predates the imperial standard and its measure cannot be pinned down exactly.
- If you want marrowMarrow bones are still sold and still worth eating. Use a current recipe with a stated oven temperature and roasting time rather than anything on this page.
Meals Medicinal (1905) by W. T. Fernie was written for a readership that still expected food to be prescribed as much as cooked, and this entry is a good specimen of the genre: a chain of quotations from Galenic dietetics through seventeenth-century household books to the very newest laboratory claim, all treated as one continuous body of evidence. The opening passage, with its talk of the "vitall moisture" and the humoral warning that too much marrow relaxes the stomach, belongs to the older tradition; the closing paragraphs, with red marrow prescribed for "bloodless patients," belong to the brief vogue for organotherapy that followed Brown-Séquard's testicular extract experiments of 1889 and produced a great many marrow, thyroid and gland preparations from manufacturing chemists. The two seventeenth-century sources are real books: A Choice Manuall, or Rare and Select Secrets in Physick and Chirurgery, printed from 1653 under the name of Elizabeth Grey, Countess of Kent, was one of the best-selling English receipt books of its century, and the Fairfax manuscripts preserve the domestic medicine of a Yorkshire gentry family. Giles Rose was indeed a master cook in the household of Charles II and is remembered chiefly for his 1682 translation of a French book of table service; the claim that he single-handedly "restored marrow pies" is Fernie's flourish rather than documented fact, though marrow was genuinely a staple of English sweet pastry and pudding-making from the medieval period until it slipped out of use in the nineteenth century. The passage on North American and Arctic peoples is offered as ethnographic proof of marrow's value and reads today as a period artefact in both its language and its assumptions.