What is the prevailing food of the people? Is it chiefly animal or
vegetable, and whence is it derived in the two kingdoms? Do they
trust to what the bounty of Nature provides, or have they the means
of modifying or controlling production, whether in the cultivation of
vegetables, or the rearing of animals? Describe their modes of cooking,
and state the kinds of condiments they employ. Have they in use any
kind of fermented liquor? What number of meals do they make, and what
is their capacity for temporary or sustained exertion?
These are some of the enquiries to which a traveller is directed to pay
attention, if he wishes to furnish and diffuse useful information.
I do not intend to go over this wide field of investigation in the
systematic and scientific manner shadowed forth by these enquiries, but
merely desire to assist the reader to pass a leisure hour, although he
may probably glean some useful information at the same time.
I propose bringing under notice some of the Animal food in which people
in various countries indulge, not that I wish persons to test these
meats, or to live upon them, unless they please. I do not deal in
them, and have no interest in their collection or sale, but I merely
desire to introduce them to notice that the reader may ascertain the
opinions entertained of them, think over them, and know how much better
an Englishman is fed than any one else in the world. So that, despite
our habit of grumbling, there is at least this undeniable fact before
us, that the middle classes are in very easy circumstances; and that
English workmen earn good wages, or they could not consume the quantity
of animal food they do at the present prices.
According to Vauban, Bossuet, and La Grange, the richest and most
comfortable nation is that which eats the most meat. At the present
prices of this article here, it certainly must be so, for a poor nation
could not indulge in the luxury.
Beef and mutton, and mutton and beef, no matter what their price, John
Bull will not dispense with; and although they are 40 or 50 per cent.
dearer now than they were ten years ago, and although we import animals
largely from abroad, and our cattle-breeders do their best to meet the
demand, cattle and sheep will not increase and multiply fast enough to
bring down the price for the consumer.
A writer in _Household Words_ thus alludes to our national
weakness.--‘Next to the Habeas Corpus and the Freedom of the Press,
there are few things that the English people have a greater respect
for and a livelier faith in than beef. They bear, year after year,
with the same interminable, unvarying series of woodcuts of fat oxen
in the columns of the illustrated newspapers; they are never tired
of crowding to the Smithfield Club cattle-show; and I am inclined to
think that it is their honest reverence for beef that has induced
them to support so long the obstruction and endangerment of the
thoroughfares of the metropolis by oxen driven to slaughter. Beef is
a great connecting link and bond of better feeling between the great
classes of the commonwealth. Do not Dukes hob and nob with top-booted
farmers over the respective merits of short-horns and Alderneys? Does
not the noble Marquis of Argentfork give an ox to be roasted whole on
the village green when his son, the noble Viscount Silvercoral, comes
of age? Beef makes boys into men. Beef nerves our navvies. The bowmen
who won Cressy and Agincourt were beef-fed, and had there been more
and better beef in the Crimea a year or two ago, our soldiers would
have borne up better under the horrors of a Chersonesean winter. We
feast on beef at the great Christian festival. A baron of beef at the
same time is enthroned in St. George’s Hall, in Windsor’s ancient
castle, and is borne in by lacqueys in scarlet and gold. Charles the
Second knighted a loin of beef, and I have a shrewd suspicion that the
famous Sir Bevis of Southampton was but an ardent admirer and doughty
knight-errant in the cause of beef. And who does not know the tradition
that even as the first words of the new-born Gargantua were ‘A boyre, à
boyre,’ signifying that he desired a draught of Burgundy wine--so the
first intelligible sounds that the infant Guy of Warwick ever spake
were ‘Beef, beef!’ When the weary pilgrim reaches the beloved shores
of England after a long absence, what first does he remark--after the
incivility of the custom-house officers--but the great tankard of stout
and the noble round of cold beef in the coffee-room of the hotel? He
does not cry ‘Io Bacche! Evöe Bacche!’ because beef is not Bacchus. He
does not fall down and kiss his native soil, because the hotel carpet
is somewhat dusty, and the action would be, besides, egregious; but he
looks at the beef, and his eyes filling with tears, a corresponding
humidity takes place in his mouth; he kisses the beef; he is so fond of
it that he could eat it all up; and he does ordinarily devour so much
of it to his breakfast, that the thoughtful waiter gazes at him, and
murmurs to his napkin, ‘This man is either a cannibal or a pilgrim grey
who has not seen Albion for many years.’
It has been well observed, that there are few things in which the
public have so great and general an interest, and concerning which
they possess so little real knowledge, as of the provision trade and
the wholesale traffic in animals live and dead, in their own and other
countries. When, where, and how raised, and what processes meat passes
through before it reaches their tables, are questions which, though
highly important, are very seldom asked by the consumers--all that they
usually trouble themselves with is, the current retail price, and the
nature of the supply.
Few of us think as we sit down to our rump steak or pork chop, our
sirloin or leg of mutton, of the awful havoc of quadrupeds necessary to
furnish the daily meals of the millions. I will not weary the reader
with statistics, although I have a long array of figures before me,
bearing upon the slaughter of animals for food in different countries.
It will be sufficient to generalize.
If the hecatomb of animals we have each consumed in the years we have
lived, were marshalled in array before us, we should stand aghast at
the possibility of our ever having devoured the quantity of animal
food, and sacrificed for our daily meals the goodly number of well-fed
quadrupeds of the ovine, bovine, and porcine races, or the fish, fowl,
reptiles, and insects, which would be thus re-embodied.
The average quantity of animal food of all kinds consumed in France is
stated on good authority--that of M. Payen--to be as low as one-sixth
of a pound per diem to each person. Even in the cities and large towns,
especially Paris, the amount of food upon which a Frenchman lives is
astonishingly small. An Englishman or an American would starve upon
such fare.
In proportion to its population, New York consumes as nearly as
possible the same quantity of meat as London, about half-a-pound a day
to each person; more beef, however, is consumed there and less mutton,
and the latter fact may be accounted for by the comparative inferiority
of quality.
It is curious to notice the various parts of animals that are eaten,
or selected as choice morsels by different persons or classes. Sheep’s
head, pig’s head, calf’s head and brains, ox head, the heads of ducks
and geese, ox tongue, reindeer tongue, walrus tongue, crane’s tongue,
&c. Fowls and ducks’ tongues are esteemed an exquisite Chinese dainty.
The pettitoes of the sucking pig, or the mature feet and hocks of
the elder hog, sheep’s trotters, calf’s feet, cow heel, bear’s paws,
elephant’s feet, the feet of ducks and geese, and their giblets; ox
tail, pig’s tail, sheep’s tail, kangaroo tail, beaver’s tail. And
the entrails again are not despised, whether it be bullock’s heart
or sheep’s heart, liver and lights, lamb’s fry or pig’s fry, tripe
and chitterlings, goose liver and gizzard, the cleaned gut for our
sausages, the fish maws, cod liver, and so on. The moufle, or loose
covering of the nose, of the great moose deer or elk is considered by
New Brunswick epicures a great dainty. The hump of the buffalo, the
trunk of the elephant, are other delicacies. Deer’s sinews, and the
muscle of the ox, the buffalo, and the wild hog, jerked or dried in the
sun, and then termed, ‘dendeng,’ is a delicacy of the Chinese, imported
at a high price from Siam and the eastern islands.
The eggs of different animals, again, form choice articles of food,
whether they be those of the ordinary domestic poultry, the eggs of sea
fowl, of the plover, and of game birds, of the ostrich and emu, of the
tortoises and other reptilia, as alligator’s eggs, snake’s eggs, and
those of the iguana, or the eggs of insects, and of fishes.
Amid all the multiplicity of special dainties, appreciated by different
peoples, the prejudices of the stomach are, perhaps, more unconquerable
than any other that tyrannize over the human mind. It is almost
impossible to get people to adventure, or experimentalize upon a _new_
kind of food. There is a great want of courage and enterprise on this
head among Englishmen. John Bull is resolved to eat, drink, and do
only what he has been accustomed to. He wants none of your foreign
kickshaws, frogs, and snails in fricassées, or sea slug, or bird’s nest
soup, or horse flesh steak. It is true he has gradually adventured
upon, and now appreciates, a few select foreign delicacies. Real lively
turtle and caviar, reindeer tongue, an imitation Indian curry, and
such like, have become luxuries; and, probably, under the mysterious
manipulations of Gunter, Soyer, and other distinguished _chefs de
cuisine_, some other foreign delicacies have found, or may yet find,
their way upon English tables.
They will probably displace ere long the four standard Scotch dishes, a
haggis, a sheep’s head, tripe, and black puddings, or the common dishes
of the Devonshire peasant and Cornish fisherman, parsley and squab
pies, in which fish, apples, onions, and pork are incongruously blended.
Queen Elizabeth and her ladies breakfasted on meat, bread, and strong
ale. Our modern ladies take tea or coffee, and thin slices of toast
or bread. The Esquimaux drink train oil, and the Cossacks koumis,
an ardent spirit made from mares’ milk. The inhabitants of France
and Germany eat much more largely than we do of vegetable diet; and
drink, at all times of the day, their acid wines. In Devonshire and
Herefordshire, cyder is the common beverage, and in the Highlands
of Scotland, oatmeal porridge is, in a great measure, the food, and
whiskey the drink of the inhabitants. The Irish peasant lives, or used
to do, chiefly on potatoes, and most of the Hindoos of the maritime
provinces on rice.
Yet all this variety, and much more, is digested, yields nutriment,
and promotes growth; affording undeniable evidence that man is really
omnivorous, that he can be supported by great varieties of food.
A recent writer speaking of human diet says, ‘it is a remarkable
circumstance, that man alone is provided with a case of instruments
adapted to the mastication of all substances,--teeth to cut, and
pierce, and champ, and grind; a gastric solvent too, capable of
contending with any thing and every thing, raw substances and cooked,
ripe and rotten,--nothing comes amiss to him.’
If animals could speak, as Æsop and other fabulists make them seem
to do, they would declare man to be the most voracious animal in
existence. There is scarcely any living thing that flies in the air,
swims in the sea, or moves on the land, that is not made to minister to
his appetite in some region or other.
Other creatures are, generally, restricted to one sort of provender at
most. They are carnivorous or graminivorous, piscivorous, or something
ivorous; but man is the universal eater. He pounces with the tiger
upon the kid, with the hawk upon the dove, with the cormorant upon the
herring, and with the small bird upon the insect and grub. He goes
halves with the bee in the honey cell, but turns upon his partner
and cheats him out of his share of the produce. He grubs up the root
with the sow, devours the fruit with the earwig, and demolishes the
leaves with the caterpillar; for all these several parts of different
vegetables furnish him with food.
Life itself will not hinder his appetite, nor decay nauseate his
palate; for he will as soon devour a lively young oyster as demolish
the fungous produce of a humid field. This propensity is, indeed,
easily abused. Viands of such incongruous nature and heterogeneous
substance, are sometimes collected, as to make an outrageous
amalgamation, so that an alderman at a city feast might make one
shudder; but this is too curious an investigation, it is the abuse of
abundance too, and we know that abuse is the origin of all evil. The
fact should lead us to another point of appreciation of goodness and
beneficence. The adaptation of external nature to man has often been
insisted on; the adaptation of man to all circumstances, states, and
conditions, is carrying out the idea. The inferior animals are tied
down, even by the narrowness of their animal necessities, to a small
range of existence; but man can seldom be placed in any circumstance
in which his universal appetite cannot be appeased. From the naked
savage snatching a berry from the thorn, to the well-clad, highly
civilized denizen of the court, surrounded by every comfort, every
luxury; from the tired traveller, who opens his wallet and produces
his oaten cake beside the welling lymph which is to slake his thirst,
to the pursy justice, ‘in fair round belly with capon lined,’ who
spreads the damask napkin on his knees, tucks his toes under the table,
and revels in calapash and calapee,--what an infinite diversity of
circumstances!
Man, with all his natural and artificial necessities, all his social
and domestic dependencies,--more dependent, indeed, upon his fellows
than the fowls of the air, from the grand exuberance of nature, and his
remarkable adaptation to it in the point alluded to, finds subsistence
under circumstances in which other animals might starve.
Perhaps we might properly urge the advice of a recent writer.--‘Make
use of every material possible for food, remembering that there are
chemical affinities and properties by which nutriment may be extracted
from almost every organic substance, the greatest art being in proper
cooking. Make soup of every kind of flesh, fish, and leguminosæ.--Every
thing adds to its strength and flavour.’
Man eats to satisfy his hunger, and to supply warmth to the body; but
the lover of good things, who finds a pleasure in eating, may also be
told that there is a beautiful structure of nerve work spread out on
the tongue, which carries upwards to the brain messages from the nice
things in the mouth.
Moderation in food is, however, one of the great essentials to health.
Sydney Smith, in a letter to Lord Murray, tells him that, having
ascertained the weight of food that he could live upon, so as to
preserve health and strength, and what he had lived upon, he found that
between ten and seventy years of age, he had eaten and drunk forty-four
one-horse wagon loads of meat and drink more than would have preserved
him in life and health, and that the value of this mass of nourishment
was about £7,000.
Sir John Ross tells us that an Esquimaux will eat twenty pounds of
flesh and oil daily. But the most marvellous account of gormandizing
powers is that published by Captain Cochrane, who in his _Narrative
of a Pedestrian Journey through Russia and Siberian Tartary_, says,
that the Russian Admiral, Saritcheff, was told that one of the Yakuti
consumed in twenty-four hours, ‘the hind quarter of a large ox, twenty
pounds of fat, and a proportionate quantity of melted butter for his
drink.’ The Admiral, to test the truth of the statement, gave him
‘a thick porridge of rice, boiled down with three pounds of butter,
weighing together twenty-eight pounds; and although the glutton had
already breakfasted, yet did he sit down to it with great eagerness,
and consumed the whole without stirring from the spot; and, except that
his stomach betrayed more than ordinary fulness, he showed no sign
of inconvenience or injury!’ The traveller I have just quoted also
states, that he has repeatedly seen a Yakut, or Tongouse, devour forty
pounds of meat a day; and he adds, ‘I have seen three of these gluttons
consume a reindeer at one meal.’
It has been well remarked by Dr. Dieffenbach, in the _Transactions of
the Ethnological Society_, that the labours of modern chemistry have
thrown a new and most interesting light on the food of the various
races of men, or inhabitants of parts of the globe which are widely
different from each other in their geographical and climatological
relations. The substances which serve as food, or the quantity which is
taken, appear to the superficial observer often of a most extraordinary
nature, because they are apparently so heterogeneous from what we are
accustomed to; so that travellers relating such facts, do not withhold
their astonishment or reprobation.
But it has been demonstrated, that the general use of certain articles,
for instance, tea and coffee, betel-nut, tobacco, and wine, depends
upon the presence in those substances of elements which are often
identical, and which are necessary to the maintenance of the animal
economy, more or less, according to the presence or absence of other
elements in the food, the different occupation, mode of living, and
so on. These points have been well illustrated and explained in the
_Chemistry of Common Life_, of the late Professor Johnston. The fact
of the Esquimaux consuming large quantities of train oil and blubber
ceases to be astonishing, when we reflect that these highly carbonized
substances serve to furnish fuel for his increased respiration.
In one word, it is necessary in the present state of chemical and
physiological science, to collect analyses of all the substances which
are consumed by a particular race, either as food or drink, or by
an habitual custom, as so called matters of luxury, or as medicine.
The ethnologist has the great merit of working here hand in hand
with chemists and physiologists, and fills up in this manner a most
important chapter in the natural history of man; as it shows how
instinct and necessity have led him to adopt different customs, and to
make use of different articles of consumption in different climates.
Among the ordinary domestic animals, there is little of novelty in
the food they supply to man. But I may notice in passing, before
proceeding to an investigation of unusual or extraordinary articles of
consumption, a few things that may not be generally known.
Jerked beef, or _tasajo_, as it is termed in Cuba, is imported to the
extent of 200 to 350 thousand quintals a year into that island, for
feeding the slaves on the plantations.
That imported from Buenos Ayres and Monte Video is preferred for
consumption on the sugar estates, to that which is received from Rio
Grande, Venezuela, Campeachy, and the United States, it being more
substantial, coming in larger and thicker pieces, better cured and
salted, and also of handsomer appearance. The class imported from
Venezuela and Campeachy, comes in thin pieces called _rebenque_,
which is not generally liked, and only bought in small parcels, for
consumption in the city of Havana. The beef which is cured in the River
Plate, from December to May, or in summer, is preferred in Cuba, by
reason of its being more nutritive than that which is cured in the
other or winter months; the colour is yellowish, and it keeps a longer
time.
In South America, the jerked beef is called _charqui_, and when salted,
and smoked or dried in the sun, _sesina_. The commerce is very large in
this species of provision.
The mode of preparing it in Chili is as follows:--When the horned
cattle are sufficiently fat, or rather at the killing season, which is
about the months of February and March, from 500 to 1000, according
to the size of the farm, are slaughtered. The whole of the fat is
separated from the meat and melted, forming a kind of lard, called
_grasa_, which is employed for domestic purposes. The tallow is also
kept separate, and the meat is jerked. This process is performed by
cutting the fleshy substance into slices of about a quarter-of-an-inch
thick, leaving out all the bones. The natives are so dexterous at this
work that they will cut the whole of a leg, or any other large part of
a bullock, into one uniformly thin piece.
The meat thus cut is either dipped into a very strong solution of
salt and water, or rubbed over with a small quantity of fine salt.
Whichever mode is adopted, the whole of the jerked meat is put on the
hide, and rolled up for ten or twelve hours, or until the following
morning. It is then hung on lines or poles to dry in the sun, which
being accomplished, it is made into bundles, lashed with thongs of
fresh hide, forming a kind of network, and is ready for market. In this
operation it loses about one-third of its original weight. The dried
meat, or _charqui_, finds immediate sale at Lima, Arica, Guayaquil,
Panama, and other places. About 6000 quintals of _charqui_, with a
proportionate quantity of tallow and fat (_grasa_) are shipped from
Talcahuana to Lima alone. Besides the large quantity consumed in
Chili, it furnishes a great part of the food of the slaves in Brazil,
the negroes in some of the West India Islands, and seamen, being the
general substitute for salt beef and pork. The _grasa_ and tallow are
also readily sold throughout South America, and are of more value than
the meat.
The slaughtering season is as much a time of diversion for the
inhabitants of that country as a sheep shearing is in England. The
females too are all busied cutting up the fat, frying it for _grasa_,
and selecting some of the finer meat for presents and home consumption.
The tongue is the only part of the head that is eaten, the remainder
being left to rot.[1] Dried meat enters largely into consumption in
several other countries.
In the Cape Colony dried meat is called _biltonge_. In the East,
especially in Siam, the dried sinews of animals are considered a great
delicacy; and dried elephant’s flesh we shall find is stored up for
food, under the name of _pastoormah_. Beef is preserved in Asia Minor
with garlic and pepper, and dried in the sun for winter food. It is
prepared in Wallachia and Moldavia, and largely shipped from Varna in
the Black Sea. Besides providing all Anatolia, Aleppo, and Damascus,
6000 cwt. or more is yearly sent from Kaissariah to Constantinople.
Hung beef from Germany is well known at our tables.
Portable and concentrated animal food is of great consequence to
explorers and travellers, and therefore it may be well to allude here
to the article _pemmican_, which is so much used by arctic travellers
and the Hudson’s Bay Company’s traders. This is meat of any kind dried
and pounded, and saturated with fat. There is as much nourishment
in one pound of pemmican as in four pounds of ordinary meat. It may
be eaten as it is, or partially cooked, and has a pleasant taste.
Sometimes it is mixed with a sufficient quantity of Indian meal and
water to cause it to adhere, and then fried or stewed.
The North American Indians dry their venison by exposing thin slices
to the heat of the sun, on a stage, under which a small fire is kept,
more for the purpose of driving away the flies than for promoting
exsiccation; and then they pound it between two stones on a bison
hide. In this process the pounded meat is contaminated by a greater or
smaller admixture of hair and other impurities.
The fat, which is generally the suet of the bison, is added by the
traders, who purchase it separately from the natives, and they complete
the process by sewing up the pemmican in a bag of undressed hide, with
the hairy side outwards. Each of these bags weighs 90 lbs., and obtains
from the Canadian voyageurs the designation of ‘un taureau.’ A superior
pemmican is produced by mixing finely powdered meat, sifted from
impurities, with marrow fat, and the dried fruit of the Amilanchier.
Sir John Richardson having been employed by government to prepare
pemmican on a large scale, at the Victualling Yard, Gosport, for the
use of the different arctic expeditions, it will be interesting to
describe the process he adopted, as given in his _Arctic Searching
Expedition, or a Journal of a Boat Voyage, &c._--
‘The round or buttock of beef of the best quality having been cut
into thin steaks, from which the fat and membraneous parts were pared
away, was dried in a malt kiln, over an oak fire, until its moisture
was entirely dissipated, and the fibre of the meat became friable. It
was then ground in a malt mill, when it resembled finely grated meat.
Being next mixed with nearly an equal weight of melted beef suet or
lard, the preparation of plain pemmican was complete; but to render it
more agreeable to the unaccustomed palate, a proportion of the best
Zante currants was added to part of it, and part of it was sweetened
with sugar. Both these kinds were much approved of in the sequel by
the consumers, but more especially that to which the sugar had been
added. After the ingredients were well incorporated by stirring, they
were transferred to tin canisters, capable of containing 85 lbs. each;
and having been firmly rammed down and allowed to contract further by
cooling, the air was completely expelled and excluded by filling the
canister to the brim with melted lard, through a small hole left in the
end, which was then covered with a piece of tin and soldered up.
‘As the meat in drying loses more than three-fourths of its original
weight, the quantity required was considerable, being 35,651 lbs.
(reduced by drying to about 8000 lbs.); and the sudden abstraction
of more than one thousand rounds of beef, from Leadenhall Market,
occasioned speculation among the dealers, and a rise in the price of a
penny per pound, with an equally sudden fall when the extra demand was
found to be very temporary.’
We import about 13 or 14 tons of gelatine a year from France, besides
what is made at home, and the greater part of what passes under this
name is, I believe, used for food. The Americans, some years ago, tried
to pass off upon us isinglass made from fish bones, but it would not go
down.
Gelatine of all kinds has usually been considered wholesome and
nourishing; and while few object to cow-heel or calf’s foot jelly, very
many are possibly unaware of the sources of much of the gelatine vended
in shapes so beautifully transparent, but which is made from bones and
hide clippings, and parchment shavings. It is said that a pair of
lady’s gloves have ere now made a ragout; and there is a hiatus in the
parchment specifications at the Patent Office, caused by an unlucky
boy, who changed them away for tarts, in order that they might be
converted into jellies.
The dust of the ivory turner in working up elephants’ tusks forms an
excellent material for jellies, and is commonly sold for this purpose,
at about 6_d._ per lb.
M. Payen has recently been at pains to disprove the vulgar notion
that bones make good soup. The celebrated _Gelatine Commission_, some
years ago, declared, as the results of many experiments, that gelatine
was not nutritious; and this result has been repeated in almost every
text-book of physiology as conclusive, and is adopted by M. Payen,
who tests it in another series of experiments. He boiled in one pot
a portion of beef completely divested of bone, and in another the
bone taken from the beef, with only a little salt. After five hours’
slow boiling, the liquid from the beef was perfectly limpid, and of
a light amber colour, leaving that aroma and delicate taste known to
belong to good beef tea. The liquid from the bones was whitish-gray,
troubled and opaque, having a very slight odour, and a not agreeable
taste. Nothing could be more opposed than the two soups thus produced.
In another experiment, he repeated this process with the addition of
some vegetables, and even some drops of caramel. The beef-soup here
maintained its delicious aroma, agreeably combined with that of the
vegetables; its limpidity was the same, but its colour of course
stronger. The bone-soup had a dominant odour of vegetables, but its
troubled and opaque aspect made it very unappetising. From these
experiments M. Payen concludes that the prejudice in favour of the
addition of bones to the soup is a prejudice, and that, in fact, bones
are not at all nutritious.
Liebig also, in his _Letters on Chemistry_, pp. 424 and 425,
says:--‘It has now been proved by the most convincing experiments,
that gelatine, which by itself is tasteless, and when eaten excites
nausea, possesses no nutritive value; that even when accompanied by
the savoury constituents of flesh, it is not capable of supporting the
vital process, and when added to the usual diet as a substitute for
plastic matter, does not increase, but on the contrary diminishes the
nutritive value of the food, which it renders insufficient in quantity
and inferior in quality; and that its use is hurtful rather than
beneficial, because it does not, like the non-nitrogenous substances
provided by nature for respiration, disappear in the body without
leaving a residue, but overloads with nitrogenous products, the
presence of which disturbs and impedes the organic processes.’ And he
further observes, that ‘the only difference between this and joiner’s
glue is its greater price.’ Jellies no doubt were considered most
nutritious during the Peninsular war, but we have learned many things
since then, of which our poor soldiers ought to have the benefit.
Portable soup is prepared in a very simple manner. The meat is boiled,
and the scum taken off as it rises, until the soup possesses the
requisite flavour. ‘It is then suffered to cool, in order that the fat
may be separated. In the next place it is mixed with the whites of five
or six eggs, and slightly boiled--this operation serves to clarify the
liquid, by the removal of opaque particles, which unite with the white
of egg, at the time it becomes solid by the heat, and are consequently
removed along with it. The liquor is then to be strained through
flannel, and evaporated on the water bath, to the consistence of a very
thick paste, after which it is spread rather thin upon a smooth stone,
then cut into cakes, and lastly dried in a stove, until it becomes
brittle. These cakes may be kept four or five years, if defended from
moisture. When intended to be used, nothing more is required to be done
than to dissolve a sufficient quantity in boiling water.’[2]
For some years past there have been imported into the Continent rather
large quantities of dried meat from the southern countries of America,
where it is known under the name of _assayo_. It gives a soup nearly
similar to that of fresh meat. Another sort of food which is prepared
in Texas, the _meat-biscuit_, is generally used in the American navy;
but, although greatly appreciated at the Great Exhibition of London,
it has not yet entered into general use in Europe. It is made of
boiled beef free from grease, the liquor of which is evaporated to
the consistency of syrup, and this is mixed with wheaten flour in
sufficient proportion to form a solid paste. This paste is then spread
out by a rolling pin, is pierced with a number of little holes, is
cut into the ordinary dimensions of sea biscuits, and then baked and
properly dried. The biscuit is eaten dry, or may be broken, boiled in
twenty or thirty times its weight in water, for from twenty-five to
thirty minutes, and then seasoned with salt or other things.