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Seventh Day: Grace
Scrape or chop fine a little raw beef from a tender, juicy piece; season with pepper and salt, and spread on a thin slice of thinly buttered bread; cover with a similar slice, and cut into three or four neat-looking pieces, according to the size of the loaf. "Raw beef!" exclaimed Grace, "that must be awful!
I hope nobody will ever give me any!" "Most people find it exceedingly nice, Gracie; and if you had such a sandwich put into your hands, without knowing what it was made of, I've no doubt you would do the same. Raw beef is very nourishing and easily digested; that is why it is recommended for sick people." No 94 TOAST-WATER.
Toast two thin slices of bread thoroughly, but without burning them. It is a great mistake to think that toast with the black edge scraped off, is as nice as that which is only well browned at first. While hot, pour one quart cold water over the slices, and let them stand in a covered pitcher until wanted.
No. 95-EGG NOG.
Beat the yolk of an egg in a tumbler, with two teaspoonfuls brandy and the same of sugar, measured even; beat the white to a dry froth, mix it thoroughly with the yolk, and fill the glass with milk.
Several variations may be made on this recipe. Some patients cannot take egg, but must have brandy and milk alone; some can not use milk, but take the brandy and egg without it, while others again, and they, perhaps, the largest class, are best nourished by an egg beaten up very thoroughly with half the stated quantity of sugar, stirred into a glass of rich milk or cream.
No. 96-FLAX-SEED LEMONADE.
Take four even tablespoonfuls whole flax-seed, upon which pour one quart boiling water. Let it stand three hours in a covered pitcher, then add the juice of two lemons, and sweeten to taste. If too thick, thin with a little cold water or ice. * "Aren't there any recipes for making cocoa, Aunt Jane?" asked Grace. "Yes, plenty; but as they are sure to come on the packages of cocoa, or broma, or 'racahout des Arabes,' or alkethrepta, or whatever other name the preparation is called by, I don't think it worth while to give you any. There is one drink, though, I used to think delicious when I drank it fresh from the mill where it was made-cocoa shells. Did you ever see any?"," "No; I never heard of them." "I've no doubt that they are to be had at the grocers, and I'll give you the directions. Miss Bremer, when she was in this country, used to call this drink, 'De nectar of de gods."
No. 97-CoCOA SHELLS.
One quart boiling water, two oz. cocoa shells, sometimes called nibs, wet first with a little cold water; boil an hour and a half, strain, add one quart milk (better if you can have it part cream), let it heat nearly to boiling, then take off and serve. "Now, as the doctor said Mamma might eat a little something besides her gruel to-day, suppose we try how she likes a poached egg on toast, with a cup of tea? It will be a pleasant little surprise to her."
This is a page of invalid cookery — the sickroom drinks and light foods that closed most nineteenth-century household manuals. Two of the five items are built on raw animal protein fed to the sick, which is exactly the population that cannot absorb the risk; the remaining three are harmless and still pleasant.
- The raw beef sandwich cannot be madeScraped raw beef never brought to any temperature carries E. coli O157:H7 and Salmonella, and scraping or chopping spreads surface bacteria through the whole mass. The infectious dose for O157:H7 is very low and the illness can cause kidney failure. Feeding it to an invalid, as the text intends, inverts the safe practice entirely.
- The egg nog cannot be made eitherA raw yolk and a raw white beaten into milk is a Salmonella enteritidis risk, and two teaspoons of brandy will not reduce it. The book also gives a version with no brandy at all — an egg beaten up thoroughly with half the sugar and stirred into a glass of rich milk or cream, which it calls the best for 'perhaps, the largest class' of patients — so there the raw egg stands with nothing to counter it. Use a current recipe if you want a nog.
- Toast-waterTwo thoroughly browned slices steeped in a quart of cold water gives a faintly toasty, slightly sweet liquid that was given to fever patients as a step above plain water. It is safe and quite drinkable, but it is nourishment in name only; sterile as written it is not, so make it and drink it the same day rather than leaving the pitcher out.
- Flax-seed lemonadeFour level tablespoons of whole seed in a quart of boiling water, steeped three hours, throws a slippery mucilage — that is the point, since it coats a sore throat. Yields about a quart and keeps a day or two refrigerated. Flax mucilage is a mild laxative in quantity, and the recipe gives no straining step at all, so pour through a sieve.
- Cocoa shells and nibs are not the same thingShells are the papery husk left after roasting; nibs are the cracked kernel. Aunt Jane treats them as interchangeable, but they are not. Cocoa husk (sold today as cacao shell tea) will take the full hour and a half of boiling; nibs made the same way give a much richer, fattier, more bitter drink and need far less time. Two ounces to a quart of water, finished with a quart of milk, makes somewhat less than two quarts, since the long boil reduces the water.
- The vanished proprietary names"Broma," "racahout des Arabes" and "alkethrepta" were proprietary invalid and breakfast preparations current in the nineteenth century — cocoa cut with arrowroot, starch, sugar or similar. All are gone. Ordinary unsweetened cocoa is the nearest thing on a shelf today.
- Poached egg on toast, mentioned at the endThe closing suggestion for the convalescent mother is sound; for anyone ill, cook the egg until the white is fully set and the yolk has begun to thicken.
This comes from Six Little Cooks; or, Aunt Jane's Cooking Class (Elizabeth Stansbury Kirkland, Chicago, 1877), a children's cookery book framed as a story: an aunt teaches a group of girls, and the girls talk back, which is why Grace's horror at raw beef is written into the recipe itself. Sickroom cookery commonly came at the end of such books, and here the doctor's permission — "the doctor said Mamma might eat a little something besides her gruel" — governs what comes out of the kitchen. Raw or barely warmed beef, scraped rather than ground so it would be "easily digested," was common medical advice for consumptives and the wasting sick in the later nineteenth century, before bacterial contamination of meat was understood. The "Miss Bremer" who called cocoa-shell tea the nectar of the gods was Fredrika Bremer, the Swedish novelist who travelled the United States around 1850 and published her impressions as The Homes of the New World; cocoa shells were then a cheap by-product of chocolate mills.