Wholesome fare, or, The doctor and the cook : a manual of the laws of food and the practice of cookery, embodying the best receipts in British and continental cookery, with hints and receipts for the sedentary, the sick, and the convalescent

Front matter

22102199688

Med

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Preface

Many people — after dining at a table served in superior style to their own, and while enjoying the easy digestion which is the combined result of good cookery, pure wine, and pleasant company— say to themselves resignedly : “ All this is very agreeable ; but it is quite out of the question for us. We have not the material means and appliances to do it. We might as well attempt to grow hot-house grapes in the open air, in our little back-garden. It is useless to attempt it.” And the dinner remains a souvenir, instead of serving as an example.

Such despondent persons clearly make a mistake as to what they may attempt, and what they may not. The extra ornamentation, the superabundance of plate, the multitude of viands, may well be let alone ; but the object of the following pages is to show that the real essentials of a good dinner, i. e. a few good dishes, may be had by those who have the courage to will it. To be convinced of this, the reader has only to study our chapter on Bills of Fare, and the receipts for the dishes composing them. They comprise choice specimens both of British and Continental Cookery; and, on inspecting them coolly and carefully, it will be found that the difficulty of their execution is rather imaginary than real. True, there are some that require to be seen done, or shown ; but even our own Plain Cookery has its complications. George III. was puzzled to guess how ever the apple could get inside the dumpling ; and the cook who dares face the preparation of Christmas plum pudding and hot mince pies, is a coward if she run away in terror from a Vol-au-vent, or a Calf’s Head a la tortue. For those kinds of dishes, it has been our endeavour to give a clear understanding of their composition. Forethought, — and the consequent avoidance of hurry, — practice, and, above all, a desire to please, will go along way towards insuring the rest.

vi PREFACE.

Other points which we have been anxious to insist on are, the Hygienic Effects of Cookery, and the Relative Value of the Different Kinds of Food. On these we have enlarged more than some may think necessary ; after perusal, however, they will probably acknowledge that such topics are not only relevant, hut highly important. The class whom we address are above the prejudices entertained by the labouring population of England and Ireland, if not of Scotland, who will only eat what they will eat, and what they are used to. During the Irish famine, there wrere persons who doubted whether starvation was worse than being reduced to eat maize; and, a few years ago, a London Club, who supplied their poor neighbours with a savoury mess, made by utilising the debris of the dinners, — broken meat, poultry, game, bread, vegetables, rice, barley, &c., — wras soon not only “ double-dashed” by the recipients, but the heads of those who served out the soup were threatened with breakage in return for their service. The result was the speedy closing of the Soup Kitchen established to meet Hard Times.

We anticipate a better fate for our culinary venture. Our readers will not feel offended at being reminded why some articles of diet are good, others indifferent, and others bad — that popular belief may be sometimes mistaken in the nutritive value it attributes to certain articles — that jellies and arrowroot pap are not nourishing, while pease soup and pudding, bean-flour, oatmeal gruel, and dried haricots made into a stew, decidedly are.

Besides the passages relating to wrhat may be fairly called the Philosophy of Cookery, it is hoped that useful suggestions will be found in the pages devoted to the Sick, the Sedentary, and the Convalescent. That the reader may never want to turn to them, is our hearty wish. It is such a pity that every body cannot be always hearty, strong, and well ! But should any passing indisposition ever cloud the azure sky of health, we feel assured that the invalid will thank us for the portion specially wrritten for his use.

Contents

PAGE

I. Generalities ....... 1

[Considerations touching Food and its relations to Health.]

I. Generalities

CONSIDERATIONS TOUCHING FOOD, AND ITS RELATIONS

TO HEALTH.

The Doctor, unsupported by the Cook’s material aid, and the Cook, unguided by the Doctor’s knowledge, arc two powerful agents, half whose strength is paralysed or misdirected. Combine their lights and their resources, and you have at your command efficient means of alleviating or even curing numerous ills which flesh is heir to. If the Doctor and the Cook together can do nothing with a case, it is indeed past hope of recovery. We thereby receive an unmistakable warning that there is, in fact, a Law of Nature, to which we must all of us finally submit.

But so long as our term remains yet unexpired, wo naturally wish to enjoy both health and the allowable pleasures attendant on health, the value of which we appreciate the more, the further we advance in years.

B

At forty, every man is either a fool or a physician ; at forty, therefore, every man is either a fool or else a little bit of a cook. By others’ faults, wise men correct their own; by listening to the complaints of others’ indigestions, wise men will ward off attacks of indigestion in their own proper persons. Besides which, we have all of us stomachs, on which we have been experimenting, more or less, during the lapse of forty long years. But all that is required to avoid gastronomic errors, and their consequent pains and penalties, is a knowledge of the principles of animal nutrition anti culinary chemistry.

Food is taken in, in some shape, by all living creatures, for the purpose both of effecting growth and of repairing loss or wear and tear of the bodily frame. No growth can take place without a proper supply of material. It is clear, therefore, that if a creature do not eat, it cannot grow.

The same is true of wear and tear. We cannot even live without thereby consuming a portion of our stock of strength. Every vital act is an expenditure of capital, which must be replaced by an adequate supply of food. If that food is not forthcoming, the constitution rapidly lapses into bankruptcy.

If there existed some one article of food, a restorative for every form of exhaustion, a panacea for every degree of fatigue, the duties of the Doctor and the Cook would be wonderfully simplified.* It is the

* Hippocrates and his followers believed that there was a unique nutritive principle common to all articles of food — a single primitive alimentary element, identical throughout all nature— and tried hard, to discover it.

AND ITS RELATIONS TO HEALTH.

immense difference in the qualities of food, and the different powers possessed by individuals (according to their state of health, constitution, and circumstance) of extracting nutriment from food, which make their task and their responsibility so heavy.

It is needless to insist that Man’s organisation is adapted to the consumption of both animal and vegetable food, thereby indicating the enormous range of his dietary. The celebrated Magendie proved by experiment that it is difficult to sustain life — at least in animals whose organs most resemble those of man — with one single kind of food taken alone during a certain lapse of time, even if highly nutritious in quality. u A diversity and multiplicity of aliments,” he says, u is a most important hygienic rule. It is, moreover, indicated by our natural instincts, as well as by the variations which the seasons bring about in the nature and kind of alimentary substances.”

Animal food satisfies hunger more completely and for a longer time than vegetables, for reasons which will be shortly given ; animal food is also more open to the attack of our digestive organs than vegetables, or, in other words, more readily excites the assimilating powers of the stomach. But, of whatever kind the food, much depends upon the mode of preparation — on the cookery. A large proportion of the nutritious elements may be wasted and lost, or they may all be preserved. In good broths and soups, for instance, every thing is retained except the little that is removed as scum.

Cookery acts on food by diminishing the firmness and hardness of some articles, and by increasing it in others. It alters their flavour, their smell, their appearance, which are sometimes repugnant to our senses. It deprives them of bitter, acrid principles, which might prove injurious to the stomach, or even to the whole economy. It heightens their savouriness, and increases their action by the addition of aromatic, pungent, and stimulant ingredients.

The best cookery in the world, says Ude, is worthless without seasoning. The precept is true as a general maxim; but it is impossible for any Cook-Book, especially one like the present, to specify the exact dosage of seasoning to be put into any dish, because not only tastes, but stomachs, differ as to the amount of salt and spice which suits them. The cook’s practice must be guided by the habits and wishes of her employer, whose use of seasonings will depend upon considerations of health. At the outset, and till after-inquiry, she had better be lighthanded with her spice ; many stomachs are deranged for days by an over-dose of pepper and cayenne.

She should remember that even with high-seasoned dishes there ought to be a sliding-scale of strength, adapting the degree to different palates. Some persons like curry and mulligatawny more moderately flavoured than others, and find that it agrees with them better. She should also carefully mark the difference between a merely piquant dish and a curry, and between a curry and a devil. Some things even, as certain smoked and salted fish, require to be deprived , by steeping, of a portion of their seasoning, to make them palatable and

AND ITS RELATIONS TO HEALTH.

wholesome food. The cook thus enlarges her employer’s bill of fare by enabling him to partake of dishes he must otherwise renounce through fear of indigestion or tormenting thirst.

To many who cannot bear their habitual use, high-seasoned dishes, occasionally and moderately enjoyed, render service. Numbers who could not take curry every day find themselves the better for a taste of it once a week or once a fortnight. Every one must judge of such points according to his own proper feelings. Next day, or the day after, he will know to a certainty whether such and such things have agreed with him.

The cook’s range of seasoning is considerable. By it is meant any solid substances or liquids which, mingled with articles of food, either increase their savour or modify and change their qualities.

The effect of seasonings, taken in reasonable quantity, is to increase the digestibility of food. They effect that object either by simply stimulating the mucous membrane of the stomach, exciting its capillary circulation and the secretion of its acid and mucous fluids ; or by giving a fillip to all the bodily functions, in such a way that its effects, general in themselves, become in their turn a cause of activity in the functions of the stomach.

The privation of seasonings has lor its effect the prolonged retention in the stomach of many relaxing and emollient substances which have little power to solicit the action of that organ. By seasoning certain aliments within clue limits, we do no more than copy Nature, who renders fruit wholesome and agreeable by associating mucilage with acids, by combining certain forms of starch with sugar, as well as by the instinctive taste with which she inspires men and animals both for salt, in saline springs and shell-fish, and for the perfume and piquancy of aromatic herbs.

Seasonings suit lymphatic temperaments, aged persons, men devoted to professions requiring great bodily or mental exertion ; they are not suited to sanguine or bilious subjects, to children, and still less to infants, and scarcely to persons in the prime of life. They should be abstained from bv nursing mothers, because the exciting effects of these substances may be transmitted to the delicate organs of their babes.

The immoderate use of seasonings has for its result — first, the production of an artificial appetite, the temptation to load the stomach with more food than it can properly digest, and, consequently, by overtaxing that organ’s powers (even when they do not directly cause it by their stimulant action on its membrane), either acute or chronic irritation ; secondly, it is sure to bring on in the end languor and debility in all the functions, premature decay of all the organs.

The above remarks, however, are not intended to apply to certain substances which custom includes in the list of seasonings, but which, although they may alter the flavour of food, do not increase its digestibility. They even retain, when used, so long as they arc unaltered in themselves, the relaxing qualities which are

AND ITS RELATIONS TO HEALTH.

naturally proper to them. Instances to the point are afforded by butter, cream, oil, &c.

Sugar not only seasons tasteless things, but also affords nutriment. Combined with insipid articles of food in moderate doses, it slightly stimulates the stomach and hastens digestion. Taken alone and in larger quantities, it produces an impression of warmth at the back of the throat and in the stomach. It leaves little residue in the intestines, and supplies the chyle with a considerable proportion of fibrine. Dogs fed with sugar only have lived from thirty to forty days. Sugar is almost always associated in nature with principles which neutralise its slightly heating and astringent properties ; so that the aliments in which sugar is naturally met with — vegetables, mucilaginous substances, and fruits — are precisely those which we have recourse to as mild, refreshing, and even slightly laxative.

Sugar renders more digestible watery and insipid vegetables, such as green peas, spinach, cooked endive, ■&c., and the starchy matters which enter broths and gruels. It tempers the acidity of certain fruits, and, when employed in such small quantities as to be unsuspected, it softens as well as heightens the flavour of many savoury sauces and ragouts. So employed, it forms a connecting and harmonising link between the sharpness of salt and the pungency of spice. Sugar is suitable to every temperament, to every climate, sex, and age. It is almost the only seasoning allowable to persons whose system is suffering from irritation, such as convalescents recovering from inflammation of the stomach, bowels, lungs, &c.

Honey is the natural sugar collected by bees from bowers and the leaves of certain plants. As a general rule, it is both less digestive and less digestible than sugar — in many cases even causing flatulence and diarrhoea. It varies greatly, according to the locality of its production, in colour, and in the aromatic principles contained in it. There are even bowers, as the kalniia, which are reputed to yield poisonous honey. It cannot in any way serve as a substitute for sugar ; but may be used with caution in sundry ways, as a variety and supplementary addition to it. On Swiss tables, the honey-pot is a standing dish ; but, after a few trials, the majority of strangers leave it in the class of u Touchme-nots.”

Oil, though not a seasoning proper, can hardly be allowed to pass without notice. The best eating oil is that obtained from olives ; its consumption is enormous throughout the countries where the olive-tree grows. The best olive-oil bnds its way to England. It should be clear, greenish, with but little smell ; such oil is pleasant on the palate, and light on the stomach. Its addition increases the nutritive qualities of fish, salad, cucumber, vegetable soups, cold boiled vegetables, &c. So mixed up, it communicates to food nothing more than a soft, pleasant bavour, and emollient properties. In hot countries, it replaces butter out of sheer necessity. The prejudice against good eating oil, entertained by many individuals, is therefore unfounded, and is often the mere result of not having made a trial of it. Taken alone , and in a certain quantity, it is purgative — probably

AND ITS RELATIONS TO HEALTH.

because it is incompetent to excite the assimilating powers of the alimentary canal.

Inferior olive-oil — strong-smelling, thick, or rancid — leaves an after-taste, and is less digestible. But it is self-evident that, with eatables at least, the very best of every thing is the best.

Very light and pleasant-eating oil is extracted from the seeds of the white poppy. It may be used freely without apprehension, as the narcotic principle of the capsule does not extend to the seed ; and is preferable to walnut-oil, which is apt to have a bitter or acrid twang. When oil is raised to a certain temperature (as likewise is the case with butter, and other modifications of fat), it loses its softening qualities, and is converted into a stimulant instead. (See section Frying , chapter Operations.)

Fat or Grease is animal oil in a solid state, obtained from quadrupeds or birds. It enters into the composition of many dishes, either as one of their first constituents, or as a final addition in the way of sauce or seasoning. Fat is either deposited all by itself in the cellular tissue, — as the suet in sheep and oxen, and the fat in hogs, — or else it is mixed up and interposed amongst the muscular and fleshy parts of the meat. In the first case, it is difficult to digest, not stimulating the stomach sufficiently ; in the latter, it renders the meat tenderer and li<rhtcr on the stomach.

O

Fat, considered as a seasoning, possesses the same qualities as oil, and, like it, when heated to a certain temperature, acquires stimulant and irritating properties.

But it is as a source of animal heat that oil, fat, and likewise butter, derive their greatest importance as aliments.

The warmth of our bodies is maintained by a process which is no other than a true combustion. We burn fuel to heat ourselves quite as much as a room is heated by burning coals in a grate. The only difference is, that our temperature is better regulated.

The two grand combustibles found in nature arc carbon and hydrogen. But carbon and hydrogen invariably enter into the composition of every animal and vegetable substance, — into wood, coal, oil, fat, spirit of wine — whatever is known as a combustible , — and into our food.

ITeat is the result of the union of oxygen with other bodies. When the oxygen taken up by the blood in the lungs arrives with it at the organs to which the circulation carries it — what does it find there ? Hydrogen and carbon. It unites with them, and we are warmed.

In a fire-place which gives out its genial heat, the oxygen of the air unites with the hydrogen and carbon of the wood or the coal. In the human frame the same oxygen combines with the carbon and hydrogen disguised in the forms of bread, soup, meat, cakes, preserves, and all the good things made of sugar , grease , and flour. There is hydrogen and carbon in every thing we eat and drink ; but those three bodies, together with icine, contain the most, and are consequently the best combustibles.

Wine, porter, beer, ale, all fermented liquors, arc combustibles ; only, in them, the portion which burns is

AND ITS RELATIONS TO HEALTH.

mixed with a considerable quantity of water. But, by ■extracting a portion of the water, you get brandy, which catches fire easily ; by extracting more water, you have spirit of wine, which burns still better. Whoever has seen a tea-urn kept boiling by a spirit-lamp can form some idea of the effects of spirit of wine in living bodies, ■even when much diluted with water.

The miracle is, that the human frame should maintain itself constantly at the same temperature, winter and summer, night and day, in the rain and in sunshine, at the equator and under the arctic circle. It is neither hotter nor colder at one time than at another, whether supplied with an excess of combustible, or deprived of fuel for days together — as is proved by the thermometer. The heat of the human body, in middle-aged persons, maybe stated at 99° of Fahrenheit. In very old persons, it will be a degree or so lower — in children and youths, a degree or so higher; and that is the whole of its variation.

When we know that combustion takes place within us, we understand at once how we are warmed. It is clear, also, that a better fire must be kept up in winter than in summer ; and Nature has provided for the want by giving us a better appetite in cold weather than in hot. In our climate the difference is less striking, because we stick to our accustomed habits, and claim the same daily ration, whether we require it or not. To appreciate the relation which exists between the internal craving for food — that is, for combustible — and the external temperature, we ought to compare the diet of the

Hindoo, who lives on a handful of rice per day, with that of the Esquimaux, who, to maintain his 99° of warmth in a climate which freezes mercury, will occasionally swallow at a sitting his ten or fifteen quarts of whale-oil. It is less agreeable than cod-liver oil, but produces exactly the same effects.

For a like reason, the Spaniard drinks water, and is satisfied ; whilst the wines of Bordeaux are brandied, to make them acceptable to the Englishman. For the same reason, too, the Russians swallow, without wry faces, bumpers of brandy that would kill an inhabitant of the South of France. In Sweden, the government is obliged to prohibit the peasantry from distilling the corn required to supply the baker ; the Arabs have accepted, without raising difficulties, the precept which forbids their using spirituous liquors. It is easy for the Arabs, who live in a hot country, to do without brandy ; it is less easy for the Swedes, who live in a cold one. The bearing of these facts on regimen and the state of health is direct and obvious.

The fat of living animals is a stock of combustible, stored away by the blood against a rainy day. Fat is the circulation’s savings-bank. There it puts aside its little superfluities, knowing well where tu find them in case of need. Witness the fat pig mentioned by Liebig, which, covered by a heap of fallen ruins, was found alive and well one hundred and sixty days afterwards. As a matter of course, he was fat no longer ; but even had the leno-th of the fast been less, it is a notable instance of the resources which, in default of

AND ITS RELATIONS TO HEALTH.

food, the blood is able to find in the fat. For the pig had most certainly continued to breathe from the first to the last of those hundred and sixty days. His fire of hydrogen and carbon had never gone out for a minute, and a lucky thing it was for the pig that he had put something by in his time of plenty. The principal sufferer was the owner of the pig, if he reckoned on the luxury of rasher and ham. On this occasion piggy literally ate his own bacon.

But all that we eat is not burnt to keep us warm ; else, what would the blood have to sustain our frame with, and to repair the continual wear and tear of our organs? Our food, therefore, maybe divided into tico distinct kinds : one kind intended to be burnt within us, which may be called aliments of combustion ; the other destined to nourish the bod}r, which may be called aliments of nutrition. The flour of wheat, of which bread is made, contains both those aliments.*

Take a pinch of flour, and pour a little water on it, rubbing it gently between your fingers. The water will turn white, and carry away with it a white powder, which you can easily collect by letting the water settle in a vessel. This powder is starch — the substance to stiffen linen and lace, and which our forefathers wore as hair-powder on their periwigs. Now, starch is an excellent combustible, being nearly half made up of

* For these and a few other interesting details, the writer is indebted to the Histoire d'une Bouchee de Pain ( The History of a Mouthful of Bread), by Jean Mace — an admirable work, which ought to be translated into English, not only for the benefit of the rising generation, but for the instruction of their parents and teachers.

carbon. One hundred grains of starch contain, in round numbers, forty-five grains of carbon, six of hydrogen,, and forty-nine of oxygen. Starch may almost be styled the parent of a large proportion of our alimentary combustibles ; for if, by an operation which Nature performs perfectly, without assistance, in certain cases, it loses a part of its carbon (leaving not more than thirty-six grains of carbon in every hundred grains of starch), it becomes — guess what — neither more nor less than sugar.

And now leave Nature to carry out her work on this same sugar, under certain conditions, and another transformation will follow. About a third of its carbon will spontaneously combine with two-thirds of its oxygen, forming thereby carbonic acid, which will fly away as a gas — as the bubbles which foam in your glass of cider.

O J O

The rest is — what? Alcohol, — the other combustible we lately mentioned, — which burns even better than sugar and starch — seeing that a hundred grains of alcohol consist of fifty-three grains of carbon, thirteen of hydrogen, and thirty-four of oxygen.

When all the starch is extracted from flour, there remains a whitish, elastic, gluey substance (glue can be made of it ; it is what renders common paste so adhesive), called gluten. Gluten dried becomes brittle and semi-transparent. One hundred grains of gluten contain siocty-three grains of carbon , seven of hydrogen , thirteen of oxygen , and seventeen of azote. Please note the respective number of grains, and also the novel element (azote) introduced.

Here you are requested to give a moment’s attention

AND ITS RELATIONS TO HEALTH.

to a well-known fact. When a man is bled, the blood drawn from him soon separates of itself into two parts — a yellowish transparent liquid, and a dark red mass floating in it. The clotted floating mass owes its colour to an infinite number of little red bodies (called the corpuscules , and which can be seen with the microscope), which are held, as it were, in a net, by the meshes of a peculiar substance, which — pray remark this carefully — is whitish , elastic , gluey. Dried , it becomes brittle and semi-transparent. One hundred grains of this substance contain sixty-three grains of carbon , seven of hydrogen , thirteen of oxygen , and seventeen of azote. It is called f brine, and is destined to form the fibres of the muscles which are contained, already half-made, in the blood.

in as we have just seen, the constituent elements of fibrine and gluten are the same, the reason is, that, in reality, the two substances are only one. The most learned man would be very hard pressed if they were shown to him, dry, side by side, to decide which sample was obtained from flour, and which from blood. Not only, therefore, are our muscles contained, already half-formed, in our blood, but, better still, their fibres exist, ready to be made use of, in the bread we eat.

We have here, then, a primary aliment of nutrition. There is no need to be over-anxious about the bodily health of the man who has plenty of good bread to eat. He has sufficient starch to keep himself warm, and sufficient gluten to sustain his strength. It is only his palate that will be inclined to grumble.

Another curious coincidence. When milk is curdled,.

1G CONSIDERATIONS TOUCHING FOOD,

there takes place in it exactly the same separation as in blood. In a yellowish transparent liquid, the whey, floats the white coagulated curd which is made into cheese, and a considerable portion of which would have made butter, had the milk been churned instead of curdled. By carefully removing the butter from the curd, a sort of white powder is obtained, which is the essential principle of cheese, and which is called caseine , from the Latin caseus , “ cheese.” And its constituents are the same as those of fibrine and gluten ! One hundred parts of caseine are made up of sixty -three parts of carbon, seven of hydrogen, thirteen of oxygen, and seventeen of azote.

It now needs no conjurer to explain why bread and cheese furnish a substantial meal. The persons on whom falls the task of detecting and preventing adulteration, will perceive the importance of their duties, when they find that skimmed milk is deficient in heat-giving, watered milk in nutritive, quality. Buttermilk and whey, however light and refreshing, are very poor beverages indeed.

But caseine is not found in milk alone. It exists in great abundance in peas, beans, lentils, and haricots, which are full of cheese, however strange you may think it. Little cheeses are sold in the streets of Canton, which it is impossible to distinguish from our own, as far as their material is concerned: only, in making them, the Chinese do not use a drop of milk. They reduce peas to a clear broth ; then they curdle the broth, as we do milk, and by the same means : they press the curd, salt it, put it into moulds, exactly as we should,