LESSON IX.
BOILING AND STEWING 73
LESSON X.
BAKING, ROASTING, AND FRYING 79
LESSON XI.
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
IN THE
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
chemical composition and of the relative nutritive value of the various
sorts of food within our reach, added to 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 household 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 incessant 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 to bear
out the common assertion that 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 crying 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 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 uncomfortably adjusted, and a great many people are
throwing 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 in their cupboards 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 management. In many cases there may be no actual
pecuniary 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 marketplace. 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 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, to 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 households 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 question. For that 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 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’ experience 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 invariably
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 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
experience 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 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 exactly 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 expression 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, meat, and vegetables we consume, but by a due combination of
food-material which shall ensure the proper proportions 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 together, and it is just to teach us this,
and to explain to us why we should rather give our attention to
procuring one form of food than another, that a knowledge of the
elements of Practical Chemistry is useful.
In reading the accounts of the hardships and sufferings 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 particularly 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.
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 lbs. or 10 lbs. 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, and 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 build him up in health, better than anyone else.
Nature is our surest guide after all, only unfortunately 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 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 beings are fed entirely on milk,
they grow very rapidly in the size of every part of their bodies. From
this we infer that 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 certain 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 proportions; 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 indigestible substance, but still it need only be
avoided by those who suffer from weak digestions. The hardworking 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, therefore, we eat a piece of cheese after
a meal, it acts like yeast in bread, and starts a change in the food;
for the chances are that the stomach in trying to digest 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 skimmilk cheeses of South Wales
yield so little nourishment in this respect, that they are of but slight
value as flesh-formers, whereas the rich cheeses from Cheddar, 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 themselves 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 understand the
component parts which make them so important.
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” 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 disarrangement of the digestive system. However finely
the _outer_ bran may be ground, it still remains innutritious, but the
_inner_ husk possesses great value from the large proportion of
nitrogenous matter which it contains. 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, 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
ingredients 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 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 consumed to afford the inhabitants anything like a
sufficiency 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 existence. 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 substances 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
contains less than the same proportion of that elementary 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, albumen, starch, sugar,
gum, fat, woody fibre, and mineral 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 fighting 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 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 endeavour to supply the waste of their
muscular system by ever so small a quantity of true flesh-forming food,
instead 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 illustration of this truth
in the working man of New Zealand as he existed some years ago. In those
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 precious 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 learn
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 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 Mediterranean
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 suffer hunger to the verge of
starvation rather than touch it. Perhaps this repugnance may be an
instinct 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 assimilate, 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 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 complaining 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 nourishment 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 component parts. It is curious to find the difference of fat in
some fishes, especially mackerel, which possesses 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 remain 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 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
portions of the fleshy substance made the most of.
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 vegetable 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 bondage, 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 apparently
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 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 examine 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
process, and if potatoes could be eaten with a sufficiency 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 prolonged fatigue. In spite,
therefore, of the comparative 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 vegetables depend much on how
they are cooked, it is perhaps useless to enter here into a longer
explanation why vegetables, though they constitute the entire food of
animals whose flesh contains the highest forms of nourishment, will not,
of themselves, supply man with the food he requires to keep his muscles
strong and vigorous. In the countries 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 BEST MODES OF PREPARING SOME SORTS OF FOOD FOR USE, WITH A SIMPLE
EXPLANATION OF THEIR 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 unheeding the old-fashioned,
and, let us add, dirty axiom, that it 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 beauty of cleanliness, she will
never be able to endure any other state of things. I declare that I have
observed 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-cleanliness, with its
deceptive whiteness, more than genuine honest dirt about which there is
no concealment, for the sham snowiness is apt to throw youthful
housekeepers 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_s._ to 25_s._ a week. Here is enough money for comfort
_if_ 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 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 nourishing; but surely she is
not to be blamed for her ignorance. 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 comfortably 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 demonstrations (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 _cleanliness_ 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.
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 the
hope that they may prove ever so slight a practical 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 procured. Brewer’s
yeast is simply the scum which rises to the top of the malt during the
process of fermentation, 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 obtained from mealy potatoes, by boiling them in water, mashing
them, and allowing them to cool to a temperature 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 dried yeast, which
keeps a long time, can be obtained, then it will be necessary to boil
some dried hops in a very little water, put some sugar to them, and add
this compound when in a state of fermentation 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 cupful 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 become dry and crusty in
the morning, and make heavy, tasteless bread. On the other hand, if the
temperature 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
certain 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 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
substitute 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 invariably 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 indigestion, 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 substitution of soda or carbonic
acid for yeast, and the addition of sugar, fat, and eggs. Of all these
materials the sugar is the wholesomest and should be the 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 household 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 temperature of the oven a
certainty by means of a thermometer. 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 indispensable 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 from, he might perhaps modify his contempt for one of the most
nourishing and wholesome forms in which he can eat wheaten flour.
Maccaroni, 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 cylinder
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 agreeable
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 macaroni 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.
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
_in_-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
wholesome 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
peeling—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 than an English one. The
potato was first grown by Sir Walter Raleigh in his garden at Youghal,
in Ireland, 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
peculiarly 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 attainable,
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 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 saucepan 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
valuable for their anti-scorbutic properties, and as a flavouring for
insipid food. Lentils are particularly nutritious, and the food sold
under the name of “Revalenta Arabica” is only the meal of the lentil
after being freed from its indigestible outer skin. In peas we find a
great deal of caseine; hence, in an analytical 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-nitrogenous 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 cultivation 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 of 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 used to assist in converting a scrap of bacon, a
bone, and a little pea-meal into a warm, comforting, nourishing mid-day
meal.
Mr. Ruskin attaches great importance to the cultivation 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 planting 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 as much exertion in the long run to keep body and soul together.
I repeat: it is not actual money which is absolutely 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 produce 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 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 _àpropos_ 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 sweeping 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 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 experience 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 bring,—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 unconsciously, 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.