BROTH.
Soup, meat, and vegetables are the principal dishes of a plain household
dinner.
When examining this more closely, we find the selection so judicious
that we may well admire the tact of woman, who discovered it long before
science did.
The good tact of woman does even more yet; it selects the dishes in such
a manner that they mutually compensate for their wants, that is, that
each offers to the body what is wanting in the others.
The principal dishes composing a meal are divided into fat-producing and
flesh-producing ones. All farinaceous diet provides the body with fat;
all albumen substances, with flesh. To support the body, however, it is
also necessary to give it salt, from which bones, hair, nails and teeth
may be formed.
Our domestic wives, indeed, look to all that. Long before scientific men
had investigated the necessity for nutriment of the kind, all-providing
woman had arranged culinary matters so as to be able to satisfy all the
demands of nature. But not only the proper selection of articles of
food,--the way and manner also in which they are cooked and served, are
of prime importance to a proper nutrition; and we maintain that
household fare may justly be regarded as a guide for scientific
investigations.
A judicious housewife will first of all place meat on the fire, to have
good soup and well-cooked meat. She will prefer beef to any other kind,
because it contains but little fat and much albumen and animal fibre;
for this reason it makes better broth, and still preserves strength
enough to be a healthy, strength-giving dish.
Besides, meat, by cooking, becomes more nutritive, inasmuch as its
digestibility is greatly facilitated. One of the most important tasks of
the cook consists in promoting one's digestion; in other words, in
saving the stomach labor. Flesh in its raw state keeps its nutritive
elements shut up in cells which are gluey. By boiling it, the gelatine
becomes soft and mixes with the water; hence it comes that broth is
glutinous, and, if allowed to cool, becomes thick and like jelly. This
substance is in part very nourishing; it is often obtained from bones
and cartilages, and then sold under the name of "bouillon-tables,"
which, when boiled in water, make a tolerably good soup. Thus we see
that the first object of all cooking is the dissolving of the cellular
tissues. Not before this is done do we obtain the real nutritive element
of the flesh, which then is taken up by the stomach all the easier,
inasmuch as it has thus been well prepared to be easily changed into
blood.
But before the meat reaches the boiling-point, albumen is separated from
its surface and mixes with the water; it is this which gives broth its
real strength and nutritive power. Afterwards, when the water boils,
this albumen condenses; the broth becomes white, as if containing the
white of eggs; from the inside of the meat flows continually more and
more albumen into the broth, and makes it stronger and stronger. During
this time, moreover, the fat parts of the meat melt, and its salts are
also dissolved in the broth; hence a great deal of the most nutritive
parts of the meat goes over into the broth; and although much of the
strength of the meat has been withdrawn, still there is much of it left
yet, and the meat has now become easier to masticate and easier to be
digested. We need not add that a sufficient quantity of salt is thrown
into the soup, which quickly dissolves in the water; but in the same
degree that the meat excretes a part of its ingredients and gives them
to the water, in the same measure does the meat absorb salt. By this it
becomes not only more tasteful and digestible, but also more nutritive.
It was not until recently that the importance of salt as a nutritive was
recognized; this cannot be otherwise, for the tissues of the human body,
as well as its blood and cartilages, need salt for their formation and
support. Who does not know that every farmer gives his cattle salt from
time to time, so as to improve their strength and general health?
Our readers will readily understand now, that the weaker the broth the
stronger must be the meat, and _vice versa_. It often occurs that we
care less to have good broth than good beef. In such cases we must not
put the meat into cold water, but into boiling water. So soon as the
meat is thrown into boiling water, the albumen on the outside
coagulates, surrounding the whole piece as it were with a hard crust,
which does not permit the nutritive parts of the inside to escape. The
same effect is produced by the roasting of the meat in an oven, although
here it is not covered by water. It is more judicious, however, and more
important for the household, to make good broth, and to let dinner
commence with it.
For he who has been at work all the forenoon, needs such food at first
as will not cause his stomach too much labor; and soup is that food. Let
every good housewife bear this in mind.