Page:Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management.djvu/154

112 suet pudding, or lightly fried bacon, or fat in one of the many forms in which it is served.

Fat and starch can replace one another to some extent, but there must be some fat, and it is better in this climate to have some starchy or floury foods. In the coldest countries plants will not grow, and so starch is unknown.

Albuminoids is a term that covers albumen and the food substances which serve the same purpose as albumen. Sometimes they are spoken of as flesh formers, or as nitrogenous foods, because they all contain nitrogen, and neither fats, starches, nor sugars do. Nothing that lives and grows is without nitrogen, and so we find it in large or small amounts in all plants as well as all animals. Our supplies of albuminoids, or flesh-formers, are obtained from lean meat, fish, poultry, game, as milk curd or cheese, eggs, gluten in flour, fibrine in oats, and in beans, peas and lentils. Albumen is found in many other foods besides eggs. The blood of many animals contains it, and we have presently to speak of albumen in meat. In most vegetable juices and in many seeds and nuts we find it also.

Fibrine is also both animal and vegetable. From meat, wheat and other corn grains we obtain our daily supply. Casein is an albumenoid that we find in the curd of milk, and in the pulses, beans, peas and lentils. Vegetable casein is sometimes called legumin, but it was given that name before it was known to be practically the same as animal casein of milk. In China cheese is made of curdled vegetable casein. Gelatine and some substances nearly like it are known as gelatinoids, and they can replace albumen in part, though not altogether.

METHODS OF COOKERY

Six Methods of Cookery are commonly spoken of, viz. 1. Broiling; 2. Roasting; 3. Baking; 4. Boiling; 5. Stewing; 6. Frying.

BROILING

Rules for Broiling Meat.—The rules for broiling remain the same always. A hot fire at first, with a hot gridiron well greased. Frequent turning. No holes made in the surface, nor cuts to see if the meat is cooked.

The meat must be turned frequently so that it may be heated and the albumen may coagulate all over and not merely on one side. Tongs are sold to turn it over with, because they cannot be used to stick into the meat and make holes for the juice to run out, but a knife or spoon or a fork run into the fat answers just as well in the hands of a cook who knows the reason why a blunt instrument is recommended. Some few broiled things should not be turned: a mushroom, for instance, is broiled stalk upwards. The inside of a split fish should first go to the fire, and afterwards the skin. Paper is wrapped round salmon and other fresh-water fish.