Page:American Pocket Library of Useful Knowledge.djvu/65

Rh

Animal Food has more nutriment than vegetable when estimated by bulk, but far less when compared by weight, the true criterion, as the following chemical analysis correctly shows:

Beets, carrots, greens, turnips, &c. contain a much smaller proportion.

By Roasting beef loses 22 per cent. of its weight, mutton 24, lamb 22, goose 19, turkey 20, duck 27, chickens 14.

By Boiling beef loses 15 per cent. of its weight, mutton 10, turkey 16, chicken 13, ham 6.

All meat should be cooked till it is separated from the blood, and the fibres become soft and easy of digestion.

Meat should be eaten sparingly by children, and by those who take but little exercise, and should be entirely abstained from when there is any symptom of excited action or fever.

Boiling is the most economical mode of cooking meat, if the liquid is used as it should be for soup or broth. The slower meat is boiled the more tender it is. Ten pounds should boil or simmer about three hours, in cold weather longer; allowing water enough to cover the meat well. If it is very salt, soak it for half an hour in lukewarm water.

Baking is well for legs, loins, &c., but bad for lean thin pieces which shrivel away.

Roasting is most wasteful, though some pieces seem best adapted for this mode. Wash the meat well, dry with a clean cloth, cover the fat with pieces of white paper tied with thread until half an hour before taking up. Turn often. Pour off the first dripping, which being liquid fat is unhealthy, and make gravy by adding flour and water. Twenty minutes to each pound of meat is the rule for roasting.

Stew Beef, ten pounds in five quarts water, with two or three onions and some cloves, a few carrots cut in quarters, herbs, and such other seasoning as you like. Strain the gravy and add a little flour and butler.

Pork is not a healthy food, though well enough for those who labour hard. It should never be eat unless thoroughly cooked.

Mutton is the healthiest meat that is eaten.

Veal is a delicate meat, but to be easy of digestion must be done tender. The knuckle slewed with herbs for about three hours is an excellent dish.

Young Turkeys may be known by their soft bills and toes. Young geese by fat white breast, yellow feet, and web of the foot thin and lender.

Stuffing or dressing for fowls is made with grated bread crumbs, minced suet or butter, sweet marjorum or thyme, nutmeg or other spice, pepper, salt, and beaten egg. Fine cut or grated ham may be added, and potatoes. A good stuffing is made of potatoes alone with suitable seasoning.

Boiled Turkey.—Stuffing of bread, parsley, lemon peel, oysters, and an onion. Season with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and one egg mixed with a bit of butter; fasten up the skin over the crop, put the turkey in cold water, boil slowly, skim well, and let it simmer for two hours—longer if very large. Chop the liver, &c. for the gravy.

Fowls and chickens may be done the same way, only in less time. Boil till tender. Seasoning should be according to taste.

Fricassee.—Wash and cut the chicken into joints, scald and take off the skin, stew for an hour with a sliced onion, parsley, lemon peel, salt and pepper—or season to suit yourself. Add pint of water and bit of butter, and just before serving up add the yolk of two eggs beaten up with a tea cup of cream, stirring it in gradually.

In drawing poultry be careful not to break the gall.

Chicken Baked in Rice.—Cut into joints, season, lay it in a dish lined with ham or bacon, add minced onion, a pint of water, and fill up with boiled rice, pressed down as much as the dish will hold. Cover with a crust of flour, and bake one hour in a slow oven.

Geese, like pork, should never be brought to the table unless thoroughly cooked.

Soups are positively injurious to weak stomachs, and to Dyspeptics. The experiments of Dr. Beaumont, with gastric juice, prove soups to be the most injurious and indigestible food that is taken into the stomach—the reason being that before the process of digestion can go on the water must be separated from the nourishment, and hence double duty is imposed on the digestive powers. Soups occasionally eaten, and for healthy stomachs may be well enough. For children soups do well, with sufficient bread, rice and vegetables in the liquid.

Save the liquor in which all meats are boiled, except smoked meat, for soup or gravy, as it contains much of the essence of the meat.

Mock Turtle Soup is made of calves head, boiled an hour gently in 4 quarts water well skimmed. Take it out, cut the meat in pieces an inch square. Slice and fry in butter 2 lbs. leg of beef and 2 lbs. of veal—slice 2 onions, and add all to the liquor, with the bones also; then 2 onions, 2 ounces green sage, some parsley, tea-spoon ground allspice, 2 do, black pepper, salt, lemon peel: stew gently for five hours; strain, and when cold take off the fat. Part the liquor and meat from the head, add Madeira or Claret if you choose, mix a spoonful of flour and a cup of butter with a little of the broth, and stir it in. Then stew an hour till meat is tender, when done add tea-spoon Cayenne, the yolks of 12 eggs boiled hard, and 12 force meat balls, if liked.

Calves feet make a good soup in imitation of the above; boiling four in two quarts water; adding such of the other ingredients as you choose.

Vegetable Soup.—12 onions, 6 turnips, 2 celery, 4