It is evident, that whether the heat be applied directly or indirectly
for cooking animal food, there must be a considerable diminution of
weight. In the cooking of animal substances in public institutions,
where the allowance of meat is generally weighed out in its raw state,
and includes bones, and is served out cooked, and sometimes without
bone, it is a matter of importance to ascertain nearly their relative
proportions. Much, no doubt, depends upon the piece of the meat cooked,
and the degree of cookery, and the attention bestowed on it. Persons who
salt rounds of beef to sell by retail, after it is boiled, get 19 lbs.
of cold boiled beef from 25 lbs. raw; but the meat is always rather
underdone.
Messrs. Donkin and Gamble boiled in steam 56 lbs. of captain’s salt
beef; the meat, when cold, without the bones, which amounted to 5 lbs. 6
oz. weighed only 35 lbs.
In another experiment, 113 lbs. of prime mess beef, gave 9 lbs. 10 oz.
of bones, and 47 lbs. 8 oz. meat; and in a third, 213 lbs. mess beef
gave 13 lbs. 8 oz. bones, and 103 lbs. 10 oz. meat; or, taken in the
aggregate, 372 lbs. of salt beef, including bones, furnish, when boiled,
186 lbs. 2 oz., without bone, being about 50 _per cent._; or,
disregarding the bone altogether, salt meat loses, by boiling, about
44.2 per cwt. or nearly half.
We are indebted to Professor Wallace (of Edinburgh) for the detail of a
very accurate and extensive experiment in a public establishment, of
which the results were, that, in pieces of 10 lbs. weight, each 100 lbs.
of BEEF lost, on an average, by _boiling_, 26.4; _baking_, 30.2; and
_roasting_, 32.2: MUTTON, the leg, by _boiling_, 21.4; by _roasting_ the
shoulder, 31.1; the neck, 32.4; the loin, 35.9. Hence, generally
speaking, _mutton_ loses, by boiling, about one-fifth of its original
weight, and _beef_ about one-fourth; again, _mutton_ and _beef_ lose, by
_roasting_, about one-third of their original weight.
The loss arises, in roasting, from the melting out of the fat and the
evaporation of the watery part of the juices, but the nutritious matters
remain condensed in the solid meat when cooked; but in boiling, the
loss arises partly from fat melted out, but chiefly from gelatine and
osmazome becoming dissolved in the water in which the meat is boiled;
there is, therefore, a real loss of nutritive matter in boiling, unless
the broth be used, when this mode of cooking becomes the most
economical.