Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/363

Rh raised to 212°, the meat is undergoing a gradual loss of its soluble and nutritious properties, which are dissolved in the water. From the surface to the interior the albumen is partially dissolved out of the meat, the fibres become hard and stringy, and the thinner the piece of meat the greater the loss of all those sapid constituents which make boiled meat savoury, juicy, and palatable. To put meat into cold water is clearly the best method for making soups and broth ; it is the French method of preparing the pot au feu ; but the meat at the end of the operation has lost much of that juicy sapid property which makes boiled meat so acceptable. The practice of soaking fresh meat in cold water before cooking is for the same reasons highly objectionable ; if necessary, wipe it with a clean cloth. But in the case of salted, smoked, and dried meats soaking for several hours is indispensable, and the water should be occasionally changed. The other method of boiling meat lias the authority of the late Baron Liebig, who recommends putting the meat into water when in a state of ebullition, and after five minutes the saucepan is to be drawn aside, and the contents kept at a temperature of 162° (50° below boiling). The effect of boiling water is to coagulate the albumen on the surface of the meat, which prevents, but not entirely, the juices passing into the water, and meat thus boiled has more flavour arid has lost much less in weight. To obtain well-flavoured boiled meat the idea of soups or broth must be a secondary consideration. It is, however, impossible to cook a piece of meat in water without extracting some of its juices and nutriment, and the liquor should in both cases be made into a soup.

Stewing.—When meat is slowly cooked in a close vessel it is said to be stewed; this method is generally adopted in the preparation of made dishes. Different kinds of meat may be used, or only one kind according to taste. The better the meat the better the stew; but by carefully stewing the coarsest and roughest parts will become soft, tender, and digestible, which would not be possible by any other kind of cooking. The only objection to stewing is tin length of time ; but a dinner may be prepared in this way the day before it is required. Odd pieces of meat and trimmings and bones cin often be purchased cheaply, and may be turned into good food by stewing. Bones, although containing little meat, contain from 39 to 49 per cent, of gelatine. The large bones should be broken into small pieces, and allowed to simmer till every piece is white and dry. Gelatine is largely used both in the form of jellies and soups. It is said by some authorities to be comparatively valueless as a food, but more recent investigations seem to prove that gelatine, although not of the same food value as albumen, leaves the body as urea, and must therefore have taken part in nutrition. Lean meat, free from blood, is best for stewing, and, when cut into convenient pieces, it should be slightly browned in a little butter or dripping. Constant attention is necessary during this process, to prevent burning. The meat should be covered with soft water or, better, a little stock, and set aside to simmer for four or five hours, according to the nature of the material. When vegetables are used, these should also be slightly browned and added at intervals, so as not materially to lower the temperature. Stews may be thickened by the addition of pearl barley, sago, rice, potatoes, oatmeal, flour, &amp;lt;kc., and flavoured with herbs and condiments according to taste. Although stewing is usually done in a stewpan or sauce pan with a closely- fitting cover, a good stone jar, with a well-fitting lid, is preferable in the homes of working people. This is better than a metal saucepan, and can be more easily kept clean ; it retains the heat longer, and can be placed in the oven or covered with hot ashes. The common red jar is not suitable ; it does not stand the heat so well as a grey jar; and the red glaze inside often gives way in the presence of salt. The lid of a vessel used for stewing should be removed as little as possible. An occasional shake will prevent the meat sticking. At the end of the operation all the fat should be carefully removed.

Frying.—Lard, oil, butter, or dripping may be used for frying. There are two methods of frying, the dry method, as in frying a pancake, and the wet method, as when the thing fried is immersed in a bath of hot fat. In the former case a frying pan is used, in the other a frying kettle or stewpan. It is usual for most things to have a wire frying basket; the things to be fried are placed in the basket and immersed at the proper temperature in the hot fat. The fat should gradually rise in temperature over a slow fire till it attains nearly 400 Fahr. Great care is required to fry properly. If the temperature is too low the things immersed in the fat are not fried, but soddened ; if, on the other hand, the temperature is too high, they are charred. The temperature of the fat varies slightly with the nature of things to be fried. Fish, cutlets, croquets, rissoles, and fritters are well fried at a temperature of 380 Fahr. Potatoes, chops, and white bait are better fried at a tem perature of 400 Fahr. Care must be taken not to lower the temperature too much by introducing too many things. The most successful frying is when the fat rises two or three degrees during the frying. Fried things should be of a golden brown colour, crisp, and free from fat. When fat or oil has been used for fish it must be kept for fish. It is customary first to use fat for croquets, rissoles, fritters, and other delicate things, and then to take it for fish. Every thing fried in fat should be placed on bibulous paper to absorb any fat on the surfaces.  COOLIE, or, a word applied to designate an Asiatic labourer not belonging to the skilled or artizan class. Its derivation is far from certain. Dr Engelbert Kampfer, in his History of Japan (London, 1727), describes as &quot;coolies&quot; the dock labourers, or, as they are called in England, &quot;lumpers,&quot; who unloaded the Dutch merchant ships at Nagasaki. At Canton to this day a labourer in any European factory is known as a &quot; coolie ;&quot; and though some have thought that the word may be of Chinese origin, as a matter of fact it is through Europeans that the natives of the Celestial Empire first became acquainted with the term. Of late the word is almost exclusively used to designate those natives of India and China who leave their native country under contracts of service to work as field-hands or labourers in foreign plantations and elsewhere. The organization, partly official and partly voluntary, by means of which these Eastern labourers are collected, engaged, and conveyed to their respective destinations, has within recent times developed itself into a regular trade. The French, Portuguese, and Spanish nations prosecute this trade to a certain extent, and one or two South American republics also take part in it ; but the great bulk of the traffic is now undoubtedly British. Coolie emigration is the direct offspring of the discontinuance of slavery. When slave labour was no longer available, the colonists who had used it were placed in an awkward dilemma. White men were physically incapable of field work on tropical plantations, and free negroes could not be induced to engage in it. In these circumstances there were but two alternatives open to the planters. Either they must abandon their estates, or they must import labour from other countries than those which had been drained and devastated by the slave trade. There were many considerations that pointed to India and China as the fields most likely to yield that supply of workers on getting which the very existence of the West Indies depended. Those great Asiatic empires were over-peopled ; their rigid forms of civilization, which had rooted them to the soil, were gradually being loosened by the impact of 