Page:The Boston cooking-school cook book (1910).djvu/235

 CHAPTER XII

BEEF

Meat is the name applied to the flesh of all animals used for food. Beef is the meat of steer, ox, or cow, and is the most nutritious and largely consumed of all animal foods. Meat is chiefly composed of the albuminoids (fibrin, albumen, gelatin), fat, mineral matter, and water.

Fibrin is that substance in blood which causes it to coagulate when shed. It consists of innumerable delicate fibrils which entangle the blood corpuscles, and form with them a mass called blood clot. Fibrin is insoluble in both cold and hot water.

Albumen is a substance found in the blood and muscle. It is soluble in cold water, and is coagulated by hot water or heat. It begins to coagulate at 134° F. and becomes solid at 160° F. Here lies the necessity of cooking meat in hot water at a low temperature; of broiling meat at a high temperature, to quickly sear surface.

Gelatin in its raw state is termed collagen. It is a transparent, tasteless substance, obtained by boiling with water, muscle, skin, cartilage, bone, tendon, ligament, or membrane of animals. By this process, collagen of connective tissues is dissolved and converted into gelatin. Gelatin is insoluble in cold water, soluble in hot water, but in boiling water is decomposed, and by much boiling will not solidify on cooling. When subjected to cold water it swells, and is called hydrated gelatin. Myosin is the albuminoid of muscle, collagen of tendons, ossein of bones, and chondrin of cartilage and gristle.

Gelatin, although highly nitrogenous, does not act in the system as other nitrogenous foods, as a large quantity passes out unchanged.