Page:Escoffier - A Guide to Modern Cookery.djvu/135

Rh perpetuated the form of the latter without insisting upon the use of its constituents, which were undoubtedly its essential part. Routine has even, in certain cases, aggravated the first error by instituting a habit consisting of substituting bones for the meats formerly employed—an obviously ridiculous practice.

In the production of ordinary consommé (No. 1) we saw that bones, even when taken from veal, as is customary in the case of braising-liquor, require, at the very least, ten to twelve hours of cooking before they can yield all their soluble properties. As a proof of this it is interesting to note that, if bones undergo only five or six hours of cooking, and are moistened afresh and cooked for a further six hours, the liquor of the second cooking yields more meat-glaze than that of the first; though it must be admitted that, while the latter is more gelatinous, it has less savour. But this gelatinous property of bones is no less useful to braisings than is their savour, since it is the former that supplies the mellowness, which nothing can replace and without which the sauce can have no quality.

Since, therefore, the longest time that a braising can cook is from four to five hours, it follows that if bones be added thereto, their properties will scarcely have begun disaggregating when the meat is cooked. They will, in fact, have yielded but an infinitesimal portion of these properties; wherefore their addition to the braising is, to say the least, quite useless.

It now remains to be proved that the above method is bad from another point of view.

I suppose I need not fear contradiction when I assert that, in order that a braising may be good, its sauce should be short and correspondingly substantial; also that the sauce obtained from a piece of meat moistened with a quart of liquid cannot be so good as that resulting from the moistening of a pint only.

It is more particularly on this account that I advise a braising utensil which can only just hold the meat, for since, in the first stage, the meat is only moistened with the braising-liquor, the smaller the receptacle may be the less liquor will it require, and the latter will in consequence be the tastier. Hence, if bones be added to the braising, the utensil must necessarily be larger, and a greater quantity of braising-liquor must be used. But this liquor will not be nearly so savoury as that obtained from the process I recommend; in fact, it will be but a rather strong broth, quite unfit for the impregnation of the meat, and the final result will be a tasteless lump of fibre instead of a succulent braising.

I must apologise to the reader for my insistence with regard