CU& FIRST LESSONS IN THE PRINCIPLES OF COOKING. FIRST LESSONS IN THE PRINCIPLES OF COOKING. IN THREE PARTS. LADY A BARKER, Author of " Stories About" "A Christmas CakeJ OF THE UJNIVERSITT MACMILLAN AND CO. 1886. RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, BRBAD STREET HILL, LONDON, E.G. And at Bungay, Suffolk* CONTENTS. PART I. PAGE INTRODUCTORY ........... . , . 3 I. THE CHEMICAL COMPOSITION OF OUR FOOD . . . . IO LESSON II. BREAD AND BEEF ............. l8 LESSON III. FISH .................. 25 LESSON IV. VEGETABLES ......... ...... 29 PART II. LESSON V. THE PREPARATIONS OF FLOUR USED AS FOOD .... 38 CONTENTS. LESSON VI. PAGE POTATOES AND OTHER VEGETABLES 44 LESSON VII. MODES OF PREPARING BROTH OR SOUP FROM BEEF . . 5 1 LESSON VIII. FUEL AND FIRE 58 PART III. LESSON IX. BOILING AND STEWING 73 LESSON X. BAKING, ROASTING, AND FRYING 79 LESSON XL BACON 86 LESSON XII. THE GIST OF THE WHOLE MATTER , 88 PART I. THE CHEMICAL COMPOSITION, AND THE EFFECT UPON THE HUMAN BODY OF THE VARIOUS SUBSTANCES COMMONLY EMPLOYED AS FOOD. FIRST LESSONS PRINCIPLES OF COOKING PART I. INTRODUCTORY. THE day has come in English social history when it is absolutely the bounden duty of every person at the head of a household whether that household be large or small, rich or poor to see that no waste is permitted in the preparation of food for the use of the family under his or her care. I am quite aware that such waste cannot be cured by theories, and that nothing except a practical acquaintance with the details of household management, supplemented by a conviction of the necessity of economy, can be expected to remedy the evil. At the same time, it is possible that ignorance of the fundamental principles of the chemicajl_ jcornposjtion and of the relative nutritive value of the various sorts of food within our a 3 4 FIRST LESSONS IN THE [PART i. 4o reach, added co the widespread ignorance of the most simple and wholesome modes of preparing such food, may be at the root of much of that waste. Many excellent works have been written on house- hold management and expenditure on both a large and a small scale, but I am not aware of any book so small as this, which exactly supplies the need I speak of, or which, laying other details aside, deals only with the subject of the preparation of food, and yet is not exactly a Cookery Book. I shall attempt in this part to give in a condensed form the reasons why one sort of food is better than another, more nutritious, and therefore cheaper, and also why certain methods of preparing that food will cause it to be more easily digested, and render it more wholesome. It must be stated in this, the very beginning, that these " reasons why " are not the result of any crude theories of my own, but are drawn from a careful study of works upon the subject by practical chemists. Whenever the question is a vexed one, or learned doctors have agreed to differ upon it, I omit it altogether, confining myself entirely to the discussion of subjects upon which there is no doubt, and stating the results of years of patient study and in- cessant experiments as briefly and simply as I possibly can. Although it is perhaps somewhat alarming to come across scientific expressions in so unpretending a little book as this, still I must entreat my readers not to be scared away by words which are unfamiliar to them ; and I may truthfully add my own experience INTRO.] PRINCIPLES OF COOKING. 5 to bear out the common assertion tlu the best and highest method of learning any subject will always prove the easiest in the long run. Instead of helplessly wringing our hands and cry- ing out about the high price of fuel and food, let us accept the present state of things as the inevitable and natural result of past years of extravagance and carelessness on our own part. The sooner we make up our minds that what we regretfully speak of as the " good old times " with their good old prices will .never come again, the sooner we shall cease to look fondly back on a cheaper past, and brace ourselves up helpfully and bravely to face the increased cost of the necessaries of life. It is much more sensible to do this, instead of going on in our old ignorant way, buoying ourselves up with hopes of a shadowy millennium of butchers' meat, of a future day when carcases of Australian or South American sheep and oxen shall dangle in English shops. Believe me, that time is a long way off, and even when it does come there will be many more thousands of hungry mouths to be filled, so that the supply will only keep pace even then rather lagging behind, as it does now with the demand of the coming years. If fuel and food cost nearly twice as much at present as they did ten years ago, then surely it becomes our imperative duty to see how we can, each of us, according to our possibilities, make the material for warmth and cooking go twice as far as they have done hitherto. Nor in making such an FIRST LESSON'S IN THE [PART i. attempt are we blindly groping in the dark, feeling our way step by step along the unaccustomed paths of scientific experiment. It has all been done for us whilst we were stupidly spending our capital, by men whose clear sight could discern the dark days ahead ; men who have, many of them, gone to their rest, before the dawn of these dark days, but who have left behind them clear instructions how to make the most of certain necessary substances whose increasing value they foresaw twenty or thirty years ago. If, therefore, we have the common sense to avail ourselves of the results of these researches and experiments, which are still carried on day after day by worthy successors of the great practical chemists I speak of, it is quite possible we may so utilize their information as to make our available material go a great deal further. At present we all confess that the balance is uncom- fortably adjusted, and a great many people are throw- ing a great many remedies into the uneven scales. Let us try a few grains of science, and a few more of common sense, and see what the practical result will be. Before we proceed to do this, however, I should like to endeavour to disabuse my readers' minds of the idea that economy and stinginess are synonymous terms. In point of fact they are precisely opposite. An individual or a household habitually practising economy has a far wider margin for charity and hospitality than the shiftless people who never can keep a penny in their purses or a meal 'n their cup- INTRO.] PRINCIPLES OF COOKING. 7 boards through sheer " waste-riff," as the north- country people call it. " Take care of the scraps, and the joints will take care of themselves/' would be a very good motto in nine-tenths of our middle- class households, and the practical result of such a theory should be better food and more of it. For my own part I have little hope of any real progress being made in the right direction until it shall have become once more the custom for ladies to do as their grandmothers did before them, and make it their business to acquaint themselves thoroughly with the principles and details of household manage- ment. In many cases there may be no actual pecu- niary necessity for such supervision, but it would at all events serve the good purpose of setting an example, besides teaching servants the real good and beauty of a wise economy, a liberal thrift. So long as the world lasts, so long will there be a Mrs. Grundy ; but if Mrs. Grundy can only be induced to go down into her kitchen and insist on a good use being made of sundry scraps and bones, and odds and ends which at present may be said to benefit no one, then will she deserve a statue in the market- place. If Mrs. A., whose husband's income may be one or two thousand a year, is able and capable to show a new cook how such and such things should be done so as to combine economy with palatableness, then will Mrs. B., whose income is barely a quarter of that sum, not consider it beneath her dignity to do so. If this movement is to do any good, it will have to 8 F1KST LESSONS IN THE [PART i. be inaugurated by people whose social and pecuniary position makes them, to a certain extent, unaffected by the pressure which weighs so heavily on their poorer neighbours. And I am going to attempt, so to speak, f o kill two birds with one stone ; to persuade even rich people to insist on a due economy in the consumption of the necessaries of life, and to assure poor people that it is possible to make a good deal more of the scanty materials within their reach than they do at present. When I speak of inducing rich people to be economical, I have no culinary Utopia in my mind's eye, when millionaires will prefer to dine off cold mutton or to lunch on bone broth. What I mean is, that rich people can surely be made to understand that it is now-a-days absolutely a greater good to the commonwealth if their house- holds are so managed that little or no material for human food can be wasted in them, than if they subscribed ever so liberally to all the great charities of London. It is just in proportion as people's minds are enlarged and their field of mental vision extended by culture and true refinement, that they will be able to perceive the importance of the ques- tion. For tr^at reason I hope and expect that the warmest supporters of the attempt now being made by the National School of Cookery to teach the mass of the English people how to make the most of the material around them, will be found in the higher ranks of our society, and that from them it will spread downwards until it reaches the cottage where INTRO.] PRINCIPLES OF COOKING. the labouring man is fed from year's end to year's end on monotonous and often unwholesome food, as much from lack of invention as from shallowness of purse. Before ending this preliminary lesson I feel it incumbent on me to state most emphatically that I do not wish or intend to organize a crusade against cooks ! In the course of nearly twenty years' ex- perience of that class of servants, I can declare that I have found very little intentional dishonesty. Waste, extravagance, and bad management I have met with over and over again, but these evils have almost in- variably arisen from want of opportunities of learning better, and I can scarcely remember an instance where there has not been an effort made to lay aside bad habits and acquire fresh ones. It is only too true, as dear Tom Hood says, that " Evil is wrought by want of thought, As well as by want of heart." So, if we can even teach our servants to think twice before they throw things into the pig-tub, it will be taking a step in the right direction. If a cook and her mistress are at daggers drawn, each regarding the other as a foe to be distrusted, then, indeed, there is little real economy to be expected. But if a cook sees that her mistress is willing to give her fair wages for her services, and to consider her comforts in other ways, whilst at the same time the lady thoroughly understands how the io FIRST LESSONS IN THE [PART i. cook's duties should be performed, the chances are that the servant will readily submit to be taught a thousand little helpful and comfortable ways. Such knowledge on the mistress's part is not incompatible with accomplishments and refinement of taste and manner, but it is not to be learned from reading this book or any other book. It can only come from study and a possibility of acquiring practical expe- rience on the subject whilst the future matron is still a young girl ; and if the scheme of the Committee of the National School of Cookery can be carried out according to their views and intentions, it will be a woman's own fault if in future her first visit to her kitchen be made as an inexperienced bride with a dozen years of apprenticeship before her ere she can venture even to make a suggestion to her cook, or dream of " tossing up " some little dainty dish with her own hands. LESSON I. THE CHEMICAL COMPOSITION OF OUR FOOD. THE old German poet who wound up each verse of his famous drinking song by the assertion that " four elements intimately mixed, form all nature and build up the world," was not so far wrong after all. The jovial song-writer referred to his favourite formula for brewing punch ; and according to him the world of LESS, i.] PRINCIPLES OF COOKING. u conviviality was built up by lemon and sugar, rum and hot water. Now, it is perfectly true that four elements go a great way towards building up the world ; but, setting aside the question of brewing punch, they are called carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. So universal is their presence in the living and growing parts of animals and plants, that they are always spoken of as " organic elements/' and science has ascertained ex- actly the proportion in which each should exist in a healthy condition of the human body. That body is incessantly, but imperceptibly, undergoing a process which cannot be better described than by the expres- sion of perennial moulting, only that, whereas certain animals cast off certain parts of their body their skin, their hair, or their feathers every year, we lose a portion of our weight every day ; that is to say, we should lose it if we did not absorb through our lungs, the pores of our skin, and our stomachs, sufficient oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen, to supply the loss caused by the wear and tear of our daily life. There has even been an attempt made to prove that our vital organs are entirely renewed every forty days or so, but for this calculation there can be no really satisfactory data, although there certainly is constant loss and gain going on within us. The material for repairing this incessant waste which is the inevitable result of the activity of our nervous and muscular system, is not supplied alone by the starch, sugar, water, and fat, nor yet by the milk, m.eaL- and vege- FIRST LESSONS IN THE [PART : tables we consume, but by a due combination of food material which shall ensure the proper pro- portions of albumen, fibrine, and caseine absolutely required by our changing frames. These are rather hard words, but their meaning will be quite plain if we take as familiar examples of the three indispensable ingredients, the white of an egg, a piece of lean meat, and a bit of cheese. Everyone can understand that, although these things contain the largest proportion of one particular substance, still there may be many other substances in which they are present, all to- gether, and it is just to teach us this, and to explain to us why we should rather give our attention to pro- curing one form of food than another, that a know- ledge of the elements of Practical Chemistry is useful. In reading the accounts of the hardships and suffer- ings of explorers and travellers, we are often surprised to learn that first one member and then another of the expedition dropped down and died long before the supplies were actually exhausted. This is parti- cularly noticeable in the account of Burke and Wills' attempt to explore the great plains of South Australia, where one by one the travellers died, not so much from sheer lack of some sort of food to eat, as from the unhappy circumstance of the only attainable food being utterly deficient in the ingredients without which the human body cannot be nourished. For instance, there was abundance of an alkaline plant on which the natives almost live at certain times of the year, and occasionally even a few fish were caught. LESS, i.] PRINCIPLES OF COOKING. 13 But these materials taken by themselves were so weak in life-supporting properties, that they failed to repair sufficiently the waste caused by severe exercise and exposure to the weather. A man may be starved to death, and yet scarcely feel hungry ; that is to say, he may be able to put food into his mouth which will allay the cravings of his appetite, but which may not have the least power to nourish his body, so that he will die as surely as though he had nothing to eat Men's instincts are generally the surest guides, and however much we may have been disgusted to hear of such facts as of Esquimaux and Samoiedes living upon blubber and fat, and even eating 8 Ibs. or 10 Ibs. of flesh at a meal, Science teaches us that they were unconsciously adopting the very best means of keeping up the supply of carbon and oxygen, or internal warmth, which their cold climate rendered absolutely necessary. So in the same way we often see a sick person take a fancy to some curious kind of food, an4 perhaps begin to recover from the moment he was allowed to have it. The chances are that if we could bring all the practical chemists in the world into his sick-room, and they were to analyse the component parts of that particular food, and at the same time ascertain exactly which of the organic elements of human life was insufficiently represented in the patient's system, the result of their researches would go to prove that the sick man knew exactly what he wanted to bnild him up in health, better than anyone else. 14 . FIRST LESSONS IN THE [PART 1. Nature is our surest guide after all, only unfor- tunately our civilization has blunted our instincts, and rendered us more or less artificial, so that we can hardly tell what is Nature, and are obliged to call in the aid of Science to teach us. Those who live in hot countries do not require to provide their systems with internal warmth by means of food, and we shall generally find that they prefer a diet which will contain very little carbon. But it often happens that an Englishman travelling or living in such places will become terrified at his loss of relish for meat and heating food, and will fly either to his doctor for tonics, to his cook for pickles to incite his flagging appetite, or, still worse, to wine or brandy for stimulants to repair his imaginary weakness. Nature, thus thwarted in her arrangements, turns sulky, and the man falls ill, accusing the climate of the fault springing from his own ignorance and folly. In his own country he knows much better what is good for him ; and in mixing bacon with his beans, or in taking, like the Irishman, cabbage with his potatoes, or, like the Italian, a strong kind of cheese with his maccaroni, he exhibits so many purely chemical ways of preparing mixtures nearly similar to each other in composition and nutritive value. In the rudest diet, and in the luxuries of the most refined table, the main cravings of animal nature are never lost sight of. Besides the first taste in the mouth, there is an after-taste of the digestive organs, which requires to be satisfied if we want to arrange a LESS, i.] PRINCIPLES OF COOKING. 15 perfect diet. It is not necessary that a food should yield every kind of material which the body requires to nourish it, for then one sort of food might be sufficient for the wants of man. Each sort must fulfil one or more of the body's requirements, so that by a wise combination the whole of its wants may be supplied. It is also to be borne in mind that our nourishment is not only the solid food which we actually take into our stomachs, according to the popular idea on the subject, but comprises the water we drink and the air we breathe. But as these pages should treat simply of the nourishment for our bodies, which nourishment must needs be submitted to the action of fire, it is only with the cooking of food we have to deal. In considering the question of the best and cheapest food, and the most wholesome mode of cooking it, we must keep steadily before us the principle, that it is not the quantity of food received into the human body which nourishes it, but the proportion which can be digested of such food. All else is sheer waste an encumbrance worse than useless whose presence clogs and throws out of gear the delicate mechanism appointed to deal with it. It is generally agreed by scientific chemists, that in casting around for something like a form of food which could be taken as a type of all others, there is none so perfect as milk. During the period when the young of animals as well as of human heings are fed entirely on milk, they grow very rapidly in the size of every part of their bodies. From this we infer that 16 FIRST LESSONS IN Th [PART i. milk must contain all the essentials which go to build up muscle, nerve, bone, and every other tissue. The first lesson we learn from taking milk as an example of perfect natural food, is that there should be a cer- tain proportion of liquid mixed with the substances we consume as food, though, as the animal attains its full size and there is only waste to be made up, not growth to be provided for, the necessity for the liquid form of food diminishes. Of the flesh-forming substances contained in milk, caseine is the most important, and in the largest pro- portions ; therefore it is with milk in the form of cheese that it can best be dealt with as human food in this place. Now, there is a popular theory that cheese is unwholesome, and it certainly is an indi- gestible substance, but still it need only be avoided by those who suffer from weak digestions. The hard- working man who labours with his muscles in the open air, and whose stomach is in the best possible condition to digest his food, does wisely to spend, as he generally does, what little money he may possess in cheese, for cheese contains nearly twice the quantity of nutritive matter he would get in the same weight of cooked meat. Even with delicate feeders, a small quantity of cheese taken with other food facilitates digestion, for caseine is easily decomposed or put in a condition which causes other things to change. When, there- fore, we eat a piece of cheese after a meal, it acts like yeast in bread, and starts a change in the food j for the chances are that the stomach in trying to digest LESS. I.] PRINCIPLES OF COOKING, 17 the cheese will digest the rest of its contents at the same time. The mouldy cheese which some people's instinct leads them to prefer, acts more quickly in this way than fresh cheese. When cheese is spoken of as a nourishing article of food, especially to those who labour in the open air, it is only cheese in which the cream has not been previously separated from the milk, for the actual nutritive value will depend on the amount of butter material left in it. The cheap skim- milk cheeses of South Wales yield so little nourish- ment in this respect, that they are of but slight value as flesh-formers, whereas the rich cheeses from Ched- dar, Stilton, and Ayrshire are not only infinitely cheaper than meat, but are also very nourishing. It will perhaps only be necessary to take bread and beef as samples of food which contain in them- selves every element required to build up the human frame, to repair the daily waste, and to preserve all the conditions of perfect health. The generality of mankind have found out the value of these substances for themselves without the aid of science ; but it may be as well to learn something about bread and beef, for the simple reason that as we cannot always, under all circumstances, make sure of having them as food, we may be able to select those substances which come nearest to them in nutritive value, if we under- stand the component parts which make them so im- portant. 1 8 FIRST LESSONS IN THE [TART i. LESSON II. BREAD AND BEEF. NATURE is always busy cooking inside us. She is ever separating, arranging, and making the best of the heterogeneous substances we give her to deal with, and it is as well to find out what materials are the easiest for her to manage, and so learn to economize her forces to the utmost. Of all the food used to repair the incessant waste caused by muscular exertion in the open air, bread and beef, as we have already remarked, best fulfil the needs of the human system under those conditions ; and we will first look at the chemical composition of bread. It is needless to trace the growth of wheat before it arrives at the mill to be converted into flour, but when it reaches that stage it comes within the limits of the inquiry which we propose to ourselves. Wheat is practically divided into two parts : the bran or outer covering, and the central grain or fecula ; and the object of the miller in the preparation of flour is to mix the qualities as above mentioned so as to suit his market, and either to separate the bran entirely or partially from the grain, or to leave the whole in flour. According to the quality of the grain and the amount of the husk left in it, the value of the flour varies, and it is divided into four classes : the " fine households " LESS, ii.] PRINCIPLES OF COOKING. 19 or best, " households " or " seconds," brown meal, and biscuit flour ; and the value must chiefly depend on the estimate which is formed of the nutritive proportions of the different parts of the bran. Many people say, vaguely, " Oh, brown bread is more wholesome than white " ; but it is impossible it can be more nutritious, though it may be more palatable; for the outer part of the bran is glazed over with a layer of flint which is quite indigestible. At the same time it must be acknowledged that our practical experience teaches us that, although the stomach may find it impossible to assimilate bran itself, yet the presence of bran in bread stimulates the juices of the stomach to greater activity, and therefore, like cheese, promotes the digestion of other things. To a delicate organization it would probably act as an irritant, and therefore its use should not be persisted in unless there is absolutely no disarrange- ment of the digestive system. However finely the outer bran may be ground, it still remains in nutritious, but the inner husk possesses great value from the large proportion of nitrogenous matter which it con- tains. The whiteness of the flour is not always a test of its purity or nourishing powers, as in cases where the flour from red wheat has been most thoroughly sifted or "bolted," it will still keep a darker tinge than even " seconds " flour obtained from white wheat, though the red wheat remains the most nutritious. It is an instance of what I have before remarked about the instinct which guides our choice of food, FIRST LESSONS IN THE [PART i. that the; navvies, who work perhaps harder than any other men in the world, make it a point to procure the very best and purest and most expensive wheaten bread. It is always the first thing thought of in settling to a job of work in a new place, that these men should be able to get the finest wheaten bread to eat. In making this proviso they are really guided by principles of true economy, for in their case the necessary waste of tissue is so great that they cannot afford to take into their stomachs any superfluous matter which will not nourish their bodies. And we will presently see why pure wheaten bread is the most nourishing of all the cereals, although there are other forms in which wheaten flour might be used with advantage, such as when made into maccaroni or sifted into semolina. In other countries, where wheaten bread is not the staple article of food, it is curious to notice how those who have to work hard in the open air have struck out substitutes for themselves which contain ingre- dients as near to wheaten bread in chemical value as can be procured. Thus the miners of Chili, whose lives are very laborious, feed on beans and roasted grain ; whilst some Hindoo navvies found their physical powers too low to do a good day's work when engaged in boring a tunnel, until they left off eating rice and took to wheaten bread and flesh. But the wheat grown in a tropical country is never of much value for nutritive purposes, nor yet that grown in a cold one. A hot summer in a sunny clime lying within LESS, ii.] PRINCIPLES OF COOKING. 21 the temperate zone produces the best grain that is, grain with the least proportion of water and the greatest of nitrogen. Rice flour possesses so much less nitrogen than does wheaten flour that its nutritive value is a good deal lessened, and in countries where it is the staple food, a very great deal has to be produced and con- sumed to afford the inhabitants anything like a suffi- ciency of nourishment. The innutritive quality of rice is naturally the reason why a scarcity of that food causes such fatal results in an apparently short time. The people who habitually eat it have already brought their vital powers to so low an ebb, that a very small diminution of nourishment suffices to lower the life- supporting standard beneath the possibility of exist- ence. The chief reason why wheat, and indeed all the cereals, are of such primary importance as food, is, that whilst nitrogen is absolutely indispensable to the animal body, it cannot be produced out of sub- stances which do not contain it. The same is true of carbon, but we must look to flesh to produce that. The chief ingredients of our blood contain nearly 17 per cent, of nitrogen, according to Liebig, and he was also convinced that no part of an organ con- tains less than the same proportion of that elemen- tary body. The nitrogenous principle in^ wheat is called gluten ; but it is the cerealin which acts as a ferment and assists in the digestion of the other substances. In wheat this is what we find water, gluten, albu- men, starch, sugar, gum, fat, woody fibre, and mineral FIRST LESSONS IN THE matter, all in certain proportions, but there is a great deal more starch than anything else. Next to starch comes gluten, and we must remember it is in that ingredient the nitrogenous principle lurks. If these component parts are again classed, the result will be that wheat stands first as a "force-producer," and second as a " flesh- producer ; " so, as strength is of more importance to the navvies than flesh, they may well be excused for being so particular about their bread. In another place we will speak of the simplest and best modes of making wheaten flour into bread. Now we must pass on to beef, and try to show why our national love of this particular form of flesh-food has had its origin in an instinct of what was best to keep ourselves in good working or fight- ing condition. Although bread actually produces fibrine, still it is best if we need only look to it for gluten, albumen, and so forth, and depend upon flesh for fibrine, where we shall find it ready-made to our hand (or, should I say to our mouth?) in the fibres of the meat. Of all the forms of meat used for human food, the flesh of the ox is that generally preferred where there is any choice in the matter, and it is certainly both nourishing and easily digested. In comparing the nutritive value of different kinds of meat, we must distinguish between fat and lean, and the amount of nourishment is in proportion to the fat or lean of the meat. Fat (that is, carbon) generates heat, but lean generates heat and forms flesh as well, for in lean LESS, ii.] PRINCIPLES OF COOKING. 23 flesh all four " organic elements " are well represented, In both mutton and pork we get so much fat that the actual nourishment contained in the same amount of beef (unless exceptionally fattened) is greater, and it is also the fullest of the red blood juices. Besides this, the loss in cooking beef is much less than in cooking mutton, owing to the greater solidity of the flesh and the smaller proportion of fat. "It is quite certain," says Liebig, " that a nation of animal feeders is always a nation of hunters, for the use of a rich nitrogenous diet demands an expenditure of power and a large amount of physical exertion, as is seen in the restless disposition of all the carnivora of our menageries." Hence it follows that for those whose daily toil necessitates an expenditure of power, it would be the truest economy if they were to endea- vour to supply the waste of their muscular system by ever so small a quantity of true flesh-forming food, in- stead of being contented with a larger meal of a less nourishing description, washed down by beer or spirit, which contains no real nutritive worth. Malt and alcohol possess narcotic and stimulating properties, and do no harm in moderation indeed, to the weak or aged they are of incalculable value. But a strong, healthy labouring man would keep himself in much better working order if he economized his beer and increased his animal food. I have seen with my own eyes a very forcible illus- tration of this truth in the working man of New Zealand as he existed some years ago. In those 24 FIRST LESSENS IN THE [PART. i. days beer and spirit used to be almost unknown except in the young colonial towns, and the early settlers up the country lived entirely on bread and mutton, for even potatoes were a rare and pre- cious delicacy for the first half-dozen years. Such a splendid physical condition of the human frame it had never before been my good fortune to behold. Everyone looked in the perfection of health: clear complexions, bright eyes, and active limbs which seemed not to know fatigue, were the result of many years of a compulsory and much-abused diet of bread, tea, and mutton. When I say tea, it was really only used as a stimulant or for warmth, for cold water was the universal beverage. People might grumble, but they throve, and the generation whom I saw growing on that diet from childhood towards man's estate might challenge the world over to produce their equals for vigour and strength. Perhaps it is rather "bull"-ish of me to insist in one page upon beef, like motley, being "your only wear," and then in the next going near to show that mutton does just as well; but, seriously, one has only to turn to Sir Francis Head's account of his ride across the Pampas, to Jearn how much exertion can be supported upon dried lean beef. It is not only, as Sir Francis says, that he endured enormous and incessant fatigue solely on this beef diet, but that months of such fatigue left him in splendid physical condition, able to do anything or go anywhere. To reconcile the two theories, however, I must add that UNIVERSITY) LESS. HI.] PRINCIPLES OF COOKING, 25 the gallant veteran confesses his beef diet rendered him somewhat lean and ill-favoured, and that he did not look so handsome and well as my mutton-fed New Zealand colonists used to do. LESSON III. FISH. IN many parts of the coast of our sea-surrounded home, fish is, from necessity, the staple food of the inhabitants; and although whole districts in other parts of the world, such as Dacca, the Mediter- ranean coast of Spain, &c., are fed almost entirely on fish, our business lies only with our own people. There is no doubt that fish, even the red-blooded salmon, should not be the sole nitrogenous animal food of any nation ; and even if milk and eggs be added, the vigour of such people will not equal that of a flesh- eating community. But of all kinds of animal food, the fresh herring offers the largest amount of nutriment for the smallest amount of money, and this statement is the more curious when we think of the turtle, which is produced in such enormous quantities on the shores of the West Indian islands, as well as the estuaries of the Indian coast. Although the flesh of the turtle is palatable and wholesome, it possesses a cloying peculiarity, insomuch that, after a year or two, Europeans will 26 FIRST LESSONS IN THE [PART I. suffer hunger to the verge of starvation rather than touch it. Perhaps this repugnance may be an in- stinct arising from the fact that the phosphoric fat of the turtle renders it difficult of solution in the digestive juices, and therefore its really nutritious properties are counteracted by this superabundant richness. So we see that the balance has to be very nicely adjusted : the old proverb, "If a little of a thing is good, a great deal is better," does not hold good at all with our food. We have to take great care that, according to the means within our reach, that supply of the proper proportions of the organic elements which are as necessary to our bodies as fuel to a fire, should be kept up. In fact, food is to our body exactly what fuel is to a fire. If we choke up the range or stove with dust and bricks, the fire will go out ; and so, if we persist in supplying the furnace of our life with materials which it cannot possibly as- similate, or use as fuel, the fire of our lives will die out. If people understood, or would even try to understand and it is not so difficult as many things uneducated people learn quite easily why certain kinds of food produce certain conditions of the human frame, there would be far less disease. The great mistake is to think that actual want of money is at the root of the bad food of English labourers. It is not so at all. I do not deny the poverty nor the toil requisite, alas ! to obtain even the scantiest meal ; but anyone with any practical experience of the very LESS, in.] PRINCIPLES OF COOKING. 27 poor of our own country will agree in the assertion that perhaps half of that pressure is removable by education in the art of making the most of things. I have often seen a poor woman who had been com- plaining to me of the scarcity of fuel, or the want of food, prepare to light her fire, cook her husband's dinner, or bake her bread, in the most recklessly extravagant manner. So with fish. How often at the time of the Irish famine were the charitable English public startled by hearing that people were starving on a coast swarming with fish ? If it had been possible to teach the poor ignorant sufferers, that although there was not quite so much nourish- ment in fish as in meat, still it would have made a palatable and wholesome addition to their starvation diet of Indian maize, much distress would have been warded off. The flesh of fish contains fibrine, albumen, and gelatine in small proportions, and fat, water, and mineral matter go to make up the rest of the com- ponent parts. It is curious to find the difference of fat in some fishes, especially mackerel, which pos- sesses a very large proportion, herrings coming next (some people say first), but at all events they both should be cooked in such a way as to get rid of as much of this fat as possible. Enough will re- main to make the fish nourishing, but if there be too much fat it renders fish indigestible. This danger needs to be particularly guarded against with eels. Haddocks, whiting, smelts, cod, soles, and 28 FIRST LESSONS IN THE [PART i. turbot are all less fatty, and consequently more digestible, than such fish as salmon, pilchards, sprats, and mackerel. Raw oysters are more digestible than cooked ones, because the heat coagulates and hardens the albumen at once, besides making the fibrine too solid, and rendering it less easy for the gastric juices to dissolve. We must bear in mind that the flesh of all fish out of season is unwholesome, and often makes people ill. I am afraid Mr. Frank Buckland and other true lovers of pisciculture would view the sufferings of such depraved gourmets with great indifference, and it is, indeed, most shocking to the food-economist to read of the shoals of baby soles an inch or two long, of diminutive oysters, of the ova of the cod, the roe of the salmon, and of the fry of the herring, which are brought to our markets and readily sold in spite of vigilant bye-laws. It is not possible in this place to deal with the subject of cooking fish : cooking it in such a manner that the fat which renders it often unwholesome shall be eliminated, and the nourishing and gelatinous por- tions of the fleshy substance made the most of. LESS, iv.] PRINCIPLES OF COOKING. 29 LESSON IV. VEGETABLES. I FEEL that I cannot begin this chapter better than by quoting what Dr. Letheby says on the subject : " Primarily, all our foods are derived from the vege- table kingdom, for no animal has the physiological power of associating mineral elements and forming them into food. Within our own bodies there is no faculty for such conversion ; our province is to pull down what the vegetable has built up, and to let loose the affinities which the plant has brought into bond- age, and thus to restore to inanimate nature the matter and force which the growing plant had taken from it." It is thus plain that the beef and mutton we eat derive their fibrine, gluten, and all other necessary ingredients from the vegetables on which the oxen and sheep have fed, though such food does not ap- parently contain any of these substances. It is a curious suggestion which I have often met with, that if a vegetarian family lived in accordance with the rules of one of their own peculiar cookery books, each member would actually consume half an ounce more animal food a day than a man would do who lived according to the usual scale of diet. Vegetables are aliments which dilute the blood, and 30 FIRST LESSON'S IN THE [PART i. contain more salts than albumen. They convey very little nutriment to the blood, as we may see in the feeble muscles of tropic-dwellers who feed almost entirely on vegetables. On the other hand, they are of great service, first in the digestive canal, where they dissolve the albuminous substances of the meat, and afterwards in the blood itself, where, if they do not actually nourish, they yet keep the albumen and fibrine in a liquid state, and enable those substances to perform their proper functions more vigorously. Of course the cereals would naturally stand first in a chapter on vegetables, as they, of all the products of the vegetable kingdom, are the most depended upon by man for food. As, however, wheat, which is the principal cereal of England, has been noticed in another chapter, we may as well proceed to ex- amine the nutritive properties of other vegetables. In such an inquiry the potato comes first, for, owing to its large proportion of starch, it is the most actually nourishing of all vegetables. This starch is transformed into fat by the digestive pro- cess, and if potatoes could be eaten with a suffi- ciency of white of egg, their nutritive value would be brought very near the meat standard. Other roots and tubers contain a larger proportion of sugar, and there is even fat present in some of them, but none are so rich in this nourishing starch as the potato. A man may, and probably will, look fat and rosy on a potato diet, yet his muscle will not be in first-rate condition, nor will he be able to endure LESS. TV.] PRINCIPLES OF COOKING. 31 prolonged fatigue. In spite, therefore, of the com- parative low price of potatoes, they are not the most economical food for a labourer, nor can he depend on their nourishing starch alone to provide him with the requisite bodily strength. All succulent vegetables are anti-scorbutic, and since the potato was brought into use as a daily ration in the fleet (not a hundred years ago), scurvy has gradually died out. If there is any difficulty in providing potatoes for during long voyages, when crossing the tropics, the potatoes will begin to grow, and so become unfit for food lime-juice is the next best substitute, for it contains most of the chemical ingredients which go to make the salts of potash found in all fresh vegetables, but which is specially present in the potato. It has often been pointed out that there is really no excuse for scurvy now-a-days, for potatoes, cabbages, turnips, and carrots can be pressed into a very small space, and yet carry their potash about with them. Indeed, this process has lately been carried to great perfection. Other vegetables are less actually nutritious than the potato, and the palate grows sooner tired of them, but yet one hundred pounds of potatoes contain barely as much nitrogenous matter, that is to say, positive nourishment, as thirteen pounds of wheat. As the wholesomeness and digestibility of vege- tables depend much on how they are cooked, it is perhaps useless to enter here into a longer expla- nation why vegetables, though they constitute the 7.7 FIRST LESSON'S IN COOKING. [PART I. entire food of animals whose flesh contains the highest forms of nourishment, will not, of them- selves, supply man with the food he requires to keep his muscles strong and vigorous. In the coun- tries where the inhabitants are compelled by the necessities of the climate to live chiefly on them, Nature is so bountiful that she does not call upon man to cultivate the ground as we are obliged to do. Therefore, it stands to reason that in a climate where severe manual labour is necessary to produce food, a diet of a muscle-relaxing, fat-forming nature is a very poor economy. PART II. THE BES7 MODES OF PREPARING SOME SOR7S OF FOOD FOR USE, WITH A SIMPLE EXPLA NATION OF 7 HEIR RESPECTIVE ACTIONS. PART II. REMARKS. THE very first principle of cooking is cleanliness. No skill or flavouring can make up for the lack of it, and if it be present, there is good hope of every other culinary virtue. But cleanliness is an elastic term, and I wish it to be clearly understood that I would fain stretch its interpretation to the utmost limit. Even the sacred frying-pan would I ruthlessly scour, all unheed- ing the old-fashioned, and, let us add, dirty axiom, that \t should be left with the fat in it. It is quite true that the fat which has been used to fry potatoes, or fritters, or anything except fish, may be poured out of the saucepan into a daintily clean basin or empty jam-pot and used again and again, but I would have every cook taught to clean her frying-pan thoroughly every time she uses it. The fat in which fish has been fried should never be used for frying anything else, and an economical housewife will take care that the fish is fried last. I have sometimes been met with the assertion that it is too much trouble and takes too much time to keep everything in a kitchen as clean as it ought to be kept. To that I reply, that if a girl be brought up by a tidy mother or mistress to understand and appreciate the value and D 2 36 FIRST LESSONS TN THE [PART n. beauty of cleanliness, she will never be able to endure I any other state of things. I declare that I have ob- i served greater dirt among the saucepans and a deeper shade of black over everything in kitchens where neither poverty nor want of time could be pleaded in excuse, than in a place where one pair of willing hands has had to keep the living-room of half a dozen people tidy. I am not sure that I do not detest surface-cleanli- ness, with its deceptive whiteness, more than genuine honest dirt about which there is no concealment, for the sham snowiness is apt to throw youthful house- keepers off their guard. For their encouragement I can assure them that it is not such a superhuman task as it appears to see that everything under their sceptre is kept scrupulously clean, for the advantages of cleanliness over dirt are as patent as light over darkness, and ninety-nine servants out of a hundred will soon come to acknowledge this themselves. People of all ranks and classes differ in this respect according to their instincts and training, and in many a fine house a dirty cook would find things more after her own heart than in a two-roomed cottage. Let us, for a moment, take the case of a girl who has been a housemaid or nursemaid in a small family, and who marries a decent young artisan earning from 15^. to 25^. a week. Here is enough money for comfort i/ the wife knows how to manage and is clean and tidy in herself. How far will that, or twice that sum, go if she be an ignorant slattern ? The chances are REMARKS.] PRINCIPLES OF COOKING. 37 that such a girl knows absolutely nothing of cooking, and that she will have to arrive at even the smallest amount of such knowledge through a long series of unpalatable meals and wasted food. Perhaps it may be years before she attains to the production of any dish which can fairly be called wholesome or nourish- ing ; but surely she is not to be blamed for her igno- rance. She has gone straight from her school to a situation whose duties have never taken her into the kitchen, and she finds herself at twenty-five years of age at the head of a working man's home, with no more notion of how to manage their income comfort- ably than if she were an infant. She has hitherto had no opportunity of learning how to cook ; but if she has been taught to be thoroughly clean and tidy in her habits and ways, she may rest assured that half the battle is won. The other half, the National School of Cookery at South Kensington steps in to help her to win, and it is to be hoped that in due time, by the establishment of branch institutions all over the kingdom, by means of lectures and demonstra- tions (for cooking cannot be taught by theory), any young woman in such a position will know where to go if she wants to learn how to cook the food her husband's wages enable her to provide. But clean- liness she must teach herself, and practise it diligently in her little kitchen, for without it she can never be a good cook, no matter how successful she be in the matter of bread, or how deftly she may handle her frying or sauce pan. 38 FIRST LESSONS IN THE [PART n. LESSON V. THE PREPARATIONS OF FLOUR USED AS FOOD. IT is well known that so far as actual nutritive power goes, both oats and barley, to say nothing of maize, rye, the millets, and rice, contain as much (oats, indeed, more) valuable material for the maintenance of the human body as wheat does ; that is to say, they all contain certain proportions of starch, protein, or the nutritive ingredient, represented by oily or fatty matter, besides sundry saline particles. All these are indispensable to the building up of the human body. Why then do we find wheat more cultivated and used in greater quantities by all the civilized nations than any of the other cereals? The only reason can be that wheaten flour alone, of all these farinaceous foods, will make fermented bread. I used at one time to think that bread-making must be the very simplest thing in the world, but when I came to be face to face with flour and yeast I found it was not so easy a matter to produce light good bread. These pages are not written therefore for the instruction of bakers or those fortunate people who have learned, at an age and under circumstances when learning is easy, how to make bread, but with LESS, v.] PRINCIPLES OF COOKING. 39 the hope that they may prove ever so slight a prac- tical help to those who are as profoundly ignorant as I was, not so long ago. First of all the yeast has to be thought of. When near a town this thorn in the path of the anxious bread-maker is removed by the facility with which brewer's or ready-prepared baker's yeast can be pro- cured. Brewer's yeast is simply the scum which rises to the top of the malt during the process of fer- mentation, and is of no use to the beer, or wort. The brewer is therefore glad to dispose of it, and the baker takes it off his hands. But he does not put it raw into his bread. A special ferment is first ob- tained from mealy potatoes, by boiling them in water, mashing them, and allowing them to cool to a tem- perature of about 80 of Fahrenheit. Yeast is then added to them, and in a few hours they will get into a state of active fermentation with a sort of cauliflower head. Water should now be gently poured into this mixture, and it must be strained, after which a very little flour should be lightly sprinkled into it. In five or six hours the whole will rise to a fine sponge, when more water must be added, and a little salt, and then the yeast is fit to use. It may now be bottled, but it is not advisable to make a great deal at a time. On account of the fermentation, yeast- bottles can only be kept from bursting by plugging their mouths with soft paper or cotton-wool. If neither the fresh yeast from the brewers (which will not keep by itself for more than a day or two) or the 40 FIRST LESSONS IN THE [PART n. dried yeast, which keeps a long time, can be ob- tained, then it will be necessary to boil some dried nops in a very little water, put some sugar to them, and add this compound when in a state of fer- mentation to the mashed potatoes instead of the brewer's yeast. Having procured or made the yeast, the next thing is to put the flour in a large tin milk-pan, make a hole in the centre of the soft white heap, and pour in a small capful of yeast mixed with a large cupful of warm water. A little of the flour is stirred in to this liquid so as to make it rather more of a paste, and then the whole is covered with a clean cloth and set to -work during the whole night. Great care must be taken not to put it in too hot a place, as it will be- come dry and crusty in the morning, and make heavy, tasteless bread. On the other hand, if the tempera- ture be too low, the flour will be dull and cold, the mixture will not have penetrated it, and the bread will not rise. But, supposing that the happy medium has been hit, and that the gas contained in the yeast has made its subtle way among the flour, then more water must be added by degrees and a very little salt. The whole mass should then be lightly kneaded by very clean hands, and when it has attained a cer- tain elastic consistency it should be quickly cut into separate portions, dropped into well-floured tins (only half fill them with the dough), which must instantly be placed in the oven. The oven should be fairly hot to begin with, and its heat increased until the LESS, v.] PRINCIPLES OF COOKING. 41 end. From time to time a clean knife should be thrust into the loaf ; if it comes out with a tarnish on the bright blade, as though it had been breathed upon, then the bread is not sufficiently baked, and there is no use in taking it out of the oven until the knife can be readily drawn out with a perfectly undimmed surface. The real art of bread-making consists in the dough not being too stiff at first to resist the entrance of the gas, nor too soft to permit the gas to pass through it quickly. It should also be sufficiently kneaded so that the gas may become well distributed throughout the mass, yet not over-kneaded, in which case a good deal of it will have escaped, and the bread will consequently be heavy. The difference between biscuits and bread is that there is no yeast in the composition of the former; they are also for the most part unleavened and very highly dried. Though valuable as a temporary substi- tute for bread, they can never be so wholesome from the absence of the water which is absorbed in the process of drying or baking. Biscuits should invari- ably be taken with ever so small a quantity of liquid, for by themselves they either absorb too much fluid from the juices of the stomach, and so produce in- digestion, or they fail to obtain as much fluid as they require from those sources, and therefore remain a long time undigested. Cakes are made by the substi- tution of soda or carbonic acid for yeast, and the addition of sugar, fat, and eggs. Of all these mate- rials the sugar is the wholesomest and should be the 42 FIRST LESSON'S IN THE [PART n. most freely used. The other ingredients are more difficult of digestion. Before leaving the subject of bread, it will be as well to notice the extraordinary difference between batches of bread. It is no reason because a house- hold receives excellent bread one week either from the baker's shop or its own kitchen that the next week's baking will not be heavy and bad. This is because we trust so entirely to the good old rule of thumb in our kitchens, scorning to make the tempera- ture of the oven a certainty by means of a thermo- meter. Half, and more than half, of the hard baking and the over or under boiling and frying with which we are afflicted arises from the extraordinary prejudice which exists against the daily use of this indispen- sable little instrument. It is the only reliable way of making sure of the oven, or the water, or the fat being of exactly the right temperature ; and yet what cook who " respects herself " would at present deign to use a thermometer, still less even a charming little contrivance which has been invented specially for her use, and is called a frimometer ? But to touch upon some of the other uses of flour. We are apt to look upon macaroni as a luxury for the tables of the rich, when it is really so low in price that it is within the reach of those who have any choice at all as to what they shall eat. It is considered a foreign composition, unworthy to take a place among the more solid flesh-formers dear to the heart of the Englishman ; but if he understood what it is made LESS, v.] PRINCIPLES OF COOKING. 43 from, he might perhaps modify his contempt for one of the most nourishing and wholesome forms in which he can eat wheaten flour. Macaroni, then, is made by the simplest imaginable process, and there is no reason in the world why its manufacture should not be carried on in- England, as indeed it is. The finest wheaten flour is made into a peculiar smooth paste or dough, and afterwards driven through a cylin- der which cuts it into ribands or tubes. Wheaten flour contains, of course, precisely the same amount of nourishment, whether it be made into bread or into the pasta from which macaroni is cut ; but whereas bread can scarcely be cooked again (except as toast), there are many ways in which macaroni can be dressed so as to form a delicious food. Simply boiled with milk and a little sugar it would be a wholesome and agree- able change in children's diet, and we must remember that for children who are born with soft bones that is, with too little phosphate of lime in their bones a diet of wheat will tend, more than anything else, to form this deposit. When I say wheat, I include maca- roni therefore, and semolina, which is the very small grain left after grinding wheat in a coarse mill. Such a mode of grinding gives but a small proportion of flour, and a certain larger residue of coarse flour or fine grains, and these grains are known as " semolina." They are chiefly obtained from the most nourishing of all the wheats, the red-grained wheat grown in Southern Europe, and especially in the Danubian Principalities. OF THE 44 FIRST LESSONS IN THE PART n. LESSON VI. POTATOES AND OTHER VEGETABLES. ALTHOUGH it is rather a departure from the plan I pursued in the First Part to speak in this lesson about potatoes, it is natural to me to do it, because, so far as my practical experience which was once /Vz-experience, remember goes, it is almost as difficult to boil a potato properly as to bake good bread. In the first place, we have one of the highest chemical authorities on our side for saying that on both whole- some and economical grounds potatoes should always be boiled in their skins. They do not look quite so well if they have to be peeled afterwards, but not only is the actual material wasted by the process of peel- ing especially where there are no pigs to eat the peelings but a great deal of the starchy substance, which is exactly what makes the potato so nourishing, is wasted. In roasted or baked potatoes, which have been peeled before cooking, the loss in weight from the skin and the drying is actually a quarter of the whole. It is curious to learn that potatoes which come to us from the bog lands of Ireland are far less watery and produce more starch than those which are grown on the dry, light soils of Yorkshire. This innate dryness is one reason why the Irish potato contains so much more nourishment LESS, vi.] PRINCIPLES OF COOKING. 45 than an English one. The potato was first grown by Sir Walter Raleigh in his garden at Youghal, in Ire- land, and it is not much more than a century since its cultivation became general in England. The first potatoes grown in England came from a ship wrecked on Formby Point, near Liverpool. The tubers were planted by chance on the soil close by, which closely resembled that of Ireland, and no part of their new home has ever suited them better. The potato, though, as we have seen, of a certain appreciable value as a flesh-former, is not to be depended upon entirely as a force-producer, for the proportion of water in 100 parts is 75*2. Next to water, its pe- culiarly nourishing starch is most largely represented, and stands at 15*5. From this starch also a pasta can be made which gives a fair macaroni, but of course the advantages of the wheaten paste would be absent. In ordinary kitchens where a steamer is used, the process of boiling a potato is easy enough, and that dry mealiness dear to the heart of a good cook can be reckoned upon. But if only a saucepan be attain- able, then, having well washed nay, even scrubbed and brushed your potatoes, put them into it with cold water ; add a little salt when the water boils ; at first it should only be allowed to boil slowly, but it may boil as fast as you like during the last five minutes. Some varieties of the potato can be cooked much sooner than others ; there is often the difference between them of twenty minutes and three-quarters 46 FIRST LESSONS IN THE [PART n. of an hour. From time to time they must be tried with a fork, which should go in freely when they are sufficiently boiled. The potatoes being now cooked enough, pour off as much water as can possibly be got rid of. Sprinkle a little more salt, take off the lid of the saucepan and set it on again in such a manner that the steam can escape, but keep the sauce- pan for a few minutes on the oven to dry the potatoes thoroughly. The saucepan should be lightly shaken from time to time to prevent the potatoes sticking to the bottom. Then serve either in a wooden bowl, with a clean cloth or a napkin, or else in a dish with perforated holes in the cover so that the vapour can escape. If potatoes form the principal diet of a family, eggs should be added where practicable, and milk, or dripping, or any sort of fat, as the potato itself is very deficient in albumen and fat. Next to the potato, the cabbage is the most widely cultivated of all vegetables, yet it is far inferior to the others in the nutriment contained in a given weight. In point of value the parsnip ranks next to the potato as a flesh-former, and possesses six per cent, of carbon. Parsnips are followed closely by carrots and onions, though the latter are principally used as a relish. But all vegetables are chiefly valu- able for their anti-scorbutic properties, and as a flavouring for insipid food. Lentils are particularly nutritious, and the food sold under the name of "Reva- lenta Arabica" is only the meal of the lentil after being, freed from its indigestible outer skin. In peas LESS, vi.] PRINCIPLES OF COOKING. 47 we find a great deal of caseine ; hence, in an analy- tical table they rank next to wheat as a flesh and force-producer, whereas we should find the other vegetables relegated under the head of " Non-nitro- genous substances," that is to say, substances which, taken by themselves without milk, butter, or fat of any kind, are absolutely incapable of producing either flesh or force. In Ireland it is the milk taken with the potato which makes it so nourishing. If potatoes were eaten quite alone, the consumer would need to eat an enormous quantity to keep himself in any sort of condition, and he would never be able to do any amount of real hard work in the open air. It is quite certain that sufficient value is not attached in England to the importance of the culti- vation of vegetables. If a few leeks or sweet herbs, a row of potatoes, or a dozen cabbages, were planted in many a tiny spot beside a cottage door, which spot at present is but a puddle or a down-trodden mass 01 caked mud, the hungry mouths inside would stand a better chance of being filled. When a poor woman has to go with her pence in her hand and buy every onion or potato or sprig of thyme which she wants to improve the flavour of the family meal, the chances are she will look upon them and very justly, too as luxurious additions to the bill of fare, and do without them as much as possible. All over France the poorest peasant has her " flavourings " close to her hand ; and it is difficult to over-estimate the boon which a few common vegetables and herbs are, when 48 FfRST LESSONS IN THE [PART IT. used to assist in converting a scrap of bacon, a bone, and a little pea-meal into a warm, comforting, nou- rishing mid-day meal. Mr. Ruskin attaches great importance to the culti- vation of the land the making the best of every inch of our own native soil ; but I fear he wants to try experiments, and grow all sorts of curious things in every conceivable part of the British Isles, whereas I only confine my ambition to those little shabby nooks and odds and ends of ground which lurk around stray cottages, whose occupants evidently prefer sitting in the tap-room of the " Chequers" to digging for an hour in a scrap of garden morning and evening. Perhaps, if, in time, we are able to show the working man how enormously his culinary comfort can be increased by a little vegetable flavouring, he may take to plant- ing and cultivating even a square rood of ground, if that be all he can call his own. I say nothing of the gain to health, for that is so easily ascertained by his own or his neighbour's experience. The seeds of common vegetables are very easily procured in fact, they can almost be had for the asking ; and, at all events, one day's beer-money would go a long way towards keeping a family in onions for a year if laid out in seed. A little soup or stew thus flavoured without extra expense, would surely be a vast gain on the hunch of dry bread and mug of weak, cold coffee, which I have often seen a labourer eating for his dinner. Then there only remains the trouble to be considered ; and a lazy man will have to make twice LESS, vi.] PRINCIPLES OF COOKING. 49 as much exertion in the long run to keep body and soul together. I repeat: it is not actual money which is abso- lutely wanting in such cases. It is that the few pence are generally laid out in the most improvident way in a way which becomes gross extravagance when it is contrasted with what the same pittance would pro- duce if properly managed. I have no hope of this little book, or any other book, great or small, working a miraculous and thorough reform, and converting every cottage in the country into a smiling abode of peace and plenty. What I do aim at and look forward to is, first, to arouse attention to the subject in those whose social rank is above that of the hand-to- mouth working man ; and next, to induce rich people to take as much trouble and spend as much money in providing their servants and workmen with the opportunity of learning how to cook their food, as they now do in teaching them and their children to read and write. Mr. Ruskin, in his " Fors Clavigera," insists very strongly that in his model farm, his land bought out of the proceeds of the " St. George's Fund," every girl shall be taught " at a proper age to cook all ordinary food exquisitely." But I would go a step beyond, and I would have every boy taught also. I don't know about the cooking exquisitely ! I should be satisfied, at first, if every boy and girl could be taught to cook even a little. For a knowledge of cooking, at all events in its simplest form, appears to 50 FIRST LESSONS IN THE [PART n. me to be every whit as necessary for a man, if he is to move about the world at all, as it is for a girl. If the man does not move about, and is fortunate enough to marry a girl trained and taught cooking either at Mr. Ruskin's model farm or at the National School of Cookery, then he may forget, or lay aside, his culinary lore as quickly as he pleases ! But if he emigrates, or enlists as a soldier, or does any of the hundred and one things which men are obliged to do in these busy days, the chances are that he will find ever so slight a knowledge of cooking a very great boon and blessing to him. One thing is very puzzling to me, though I know not why it should be brought in apropos of vegetables. It is the staunch conservatism, where food or cooking is concerned, of the working classes of England. In politics they are very often to a man, nay, even to a woman, advanced Liberals, to say the least of it. They are much more ready to advocate and adopt sweep- ing changes in things of which, after all, they cannot know a great deal ; but they distrust anyone who suggests that they could improve the matters which lie close around them, and with which they are at least familiar. " My ould grandmother did it that way, and she lived till ninety," is an unanswerable argument against making the scrap of meat into a pot-au-feu, and adding vegetables and meat to it, instead of frizzling and burning the same scanty portion of meat in a greasy frying-pan over a smoky fire. I feel persuaded, therefore, that the great LESS, vii.] PRINCIPLES OF COOKING. $i reform in cooking and economic management of our food-material must begin in the classes above the working man. When he sees and learns by experi- ence that an ounce of meat, properly dressed, will go further in actual nourishment and strength-imparting qualities than two ounces heated in his old barbarous method, he may perhaps be induced to consent to his "missis " or the "gals " being "learned" how to cook. My own private hope and I would almost say expectation is, that an increase in the artisan's or the working man's comfort at home, such comfort as better cooked food and more of it must surely oring, will lead to his wages finding their way oftener into the butcher's shop than the public-house. A well-fed man is very seldom a drunkard ; and it may be that in the spread and development of an attempt at culinary reform, two birds may, all un- consciously, be killed with one stone. In improving cottage comforts we may perhaps strike a great blow (with our frying-pans and soup-kettles !) at the shining glasses and quart pots of the gin-palace. God grant that it be so ! LESSON VII. MODES OF PREPARING BROTH OR SOUP FROM BEEF. THE reason I have placed this subject in a separate lesson is because of its enormous importance in the sick-room. More delicate children are reared E 2 52 FIRST LESSONS IN THE [PART n. into health and strength, and more lives are saved, by good beef-tea than most of us have any idea of. This is the more extraordinary when we re- member that even the strongest and best beef-tea contains an almost infinitesimal amount of actual nourishment. So that it is not to its capacity for supplying to the wasted and feeble human frame either strength or nourishment that we must attribute its wonderful efficacy. If the strongest beef-tea be analysed, the meat would be found to have lost in the process of turning into liquid nearly all its albu- men, fibrin e, and caseine. In other words, it would have parted with its most important constituents ; and we might suppose it therefore to be valueless to the human system. But Experience steps in where Chemistry stops and shakes her head, and Experience declares that well-made beef-tea possesses a reparative power on a weakened digestion which nothing else in the world except milk can come near. It may not actually contain all the elements of nourishment within itself, as milk does, but it is a wonderful assimilator. It soothes and repairs and collects the enfeebled organs and juices, and enables them to return to their proper functions. Therefore we say that beef-tea is nourishing, when it is not in the least nourishing in itself, but it has the power of making ready for other substances to nourish. Although every sort of meat can be made into soup or broth, bee makes the best and wholesomest. For one reason of this we must search in the fibrin e, LESS. vii.J PRINCIPLES OF COOKING. 53 which holds more red juice than that of any other meat, and it is this red juice which we particularly want. Everybody knows that the leanest meat is the best for soup-making ; the least particle of fat is out of place in broth or soups, and indeed renders it absolutely unwholesome as well as nauseous. In many emergencies beef-tea has to be prepared at almost a moment's notice, and then I would re- commend that the meat be as thoroughly freed from fat as possible, chopped finely, and soaked in its own weight of cold water for ten minutes or so. Then heat it slowly to boiling-point, let it boil for two or three minutes, and you will have a strong and deli- cious beef-tea, better than can be obtained by boiling in the ordinary way for many hours. Another method is to place the finely-chopped meat in a large, clean jam-pot, with a little water and a pinch of salt. The mouth of the vessel should be closed by means of a tightly-tied bladder or a thick paste all over it, as if it were a meat-pudding, and placed in a sauce- pan half full of cold water. The saucepan should then be covered with its own lid and set upon or by the side of the fire to simmer slowly. If there be no time to let the beef- tea or essence in the jam-pot get cold, it must be skimmed as clearly as possible, and any extra globules of fat floating on the surface re- moved by a careful application of white blotting paper. Some people do not add any water at all to the cut-up beef, under the impression that the essence must be stronger without the addition. But my indi- 54 FIRST LESSONS IN THE [PART n. vidual experience teaches me that whereas the differ- ence in nutritive value is very slight, sick people do not like the beef-tea thus prepared, and will not take it so readily as when it has been made after the fol- lowing manner. It is necessary, however, to state that the process I am now going to describe cannot be hurried, and that it is therefore imperative to have one day's notice when beef-tea made in this way is required. Take two or three pounds of the leanest beef to be procured, add one quart of water, and two shank bones of mutton, which bones should be well washed before using. A pinch of salt, and another pinch of grated lemon-peel, or a tiny bit of the peel itself, are all I should add, for a sick person's throat is generally too tender for pepper, and his palate too delicate for anything like flavouring or sauces. The lean meat and shank bones are to be put into a saucepan, whose white enamelled lining should be daintily and scrupu- lously clean, and the saucepan, with its lid fitting very close indeed, set by the side of a moderately good fire to simmer slowly the whole day long. It must never approach boiling, and yet the action of fire upon its contents should be decided, though gentle. At the last moment before shutting up for the night, strain the soup through a fine hair sieve into a clean basin, and in the morning you should find, beneath a preserving scum of fat, about a pint of clear, solid, beef jelly, which can either be eaten cold, or warmed, without the addition of one drop of water, into a deli- LESS, vii.] PRINCIPLES OF COOKING. 55 cious