Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 22.djvu/706

688 the bouillon is poured out? This can not be of much use if all, or almost all, the soluble matters have found their way into the bouillon. Is it much more than mere padding?

M. The bouilli can not be of any very great value as food; and I am very much disposed to think that its place may often be supplied with advantage by bread or potatoes, or some other form of farinaceous food. For myself, I should infinitely prefer a basin of bouillon with bread, or a basin of purée with bread, to a basin of bouillon and a plate of bouilli after it, without bread; and I think my instincts do not mislead me in this matter. I have a small appetite, and no superabundance of digestive power; my inclinations turn toward vegetable food rather than toward animal food, and I can easily see that farinaceous food may be really more suitable to the wants of my system than anything which is left behind in the bouilli.

C. I have for years been trying to make the poor in my parish acquainted with the virtues of the bouillon and bouilli of the French ordinary pot-mi-feu, For making an ordinary pot-au-feu, Gouffé, in his "Livre de Cuisine" (Paris, Hachette, 1867), tells us to take of

Having placed the meat and bones in the stew-pan, with the bones undermost, the water is poured in, and the salt added. Then, after putting it upon the fire and allowing it to remain there until the water boils, and a scum collects upon the surface, the pan is removed from the fire and the scum skimmed off, a little cold water being first added for some purpose or other which is more intelligible to a cook than to me. Then this process of boiling, adding a little cold water, removing from the fire, and skimming, is repeated twice. Then, and not until then, the vegetables are added, and the pan is placed near enough to the fire to allow the contents to simmer (not to boil) for three or four hours. Then the bouillon is poured off and the bouilli prepared as a dish in one way or another. And lastly, when the bouillon is in the soup-tureen, and not until then, enough caramel is added to it to give it a delicate orange tinge—une teinte dorée. The lid of the stew-pan is never to be closed down tightly, for if this be done the bouillon is very likely to spoil by becoming thick and muddy.The quantity given here is for four or five persons. To try and make less, Gouffé tells us, is bad economy, likely to issue in bad cookery, and this is intelligible enough, for the bouillon may be used in various ways, not only on the first day, but on the day following. The imperial pint, containing twenty ounces, is the pint referred to. but it never entered into my head to suppose that the bouillon was ever to be preferred to the bouilli, or that bread, or potatoes, or pea-flour, or polenta might now and then be substituted for the latter with advantage. I have also been a good deal