PART II.

REMARKS.

The very first principle of cooking is cleanliness. No skill or flavouring can make up for the lack of it, and if it be present, there is good hope of every other culinary virtue. But cleanliness is an elastic term, and I wish it to be clearly understood that I would fain stretch its interpretation to the utmost limit. Even the sacred frying-pan would I ruthlessly scour, all unheeding the old-fashioned, and, let us add, dirty axiom, that it should be left with the fat in it. It is quite true that the fat which has been used to fry potatoes, or fritters, or anything _except_ fish, may be poured out of the saucepan into a daintily clean basin or empty jam-pot and used again and again, but I would have every cook taught to clean her frying-pan thoroughly every time she uses it. The fat in which fish has been fried should _never_ be used for frying anything else, and an economical housewife will take care that the fish is fried last. I have sometimes been met with the assertion that it is too much trouble and takes too much time to keep everything in a kitchen as clean as it ought to be kept. To that I reply, that if a girl be brought up by a tidy mother or mistress to understand and appreciate the value and beauty of cleanliness, she will never be able to endure any other state of things. I declare that I have observed greater dirt among the saucepans and a deeper shade of black over everything in kitchens where neither poverty nor want of time could be pleaded in excuse, than in a place where one pair of willing hands has had to keep the living-room of half a dozen people tidy.

I am not sure that I do not detest surface-cleanliness, with its deceptive whiteness, more than genuine honest dirt about which there is no concealment, for the sham snowiness is apt to throw youthful housekeepers off their guard. For their encouragement I can assure them that it is not such a superhuman task as it appears to see that everything under their sceptre is kept scrupulously clean, for the advantages of cleanliness over dirt are as patent as light over darkness, and ninety-nine servants out of a hundred will soon come to acknowledge this themselves. People of all ranks and classes differ in this respect according to their instincts and training, and in many a fine house a dirty cook would find things more after her own heart than in a two-roomed cottage.

Let us, for a moment, take the case of a girl who has been a housemaid or nursemaid in a small family, and who marries a decent young artisan earning from 15_s._ to 25_s._ a week. Here is enough money for comfort _if_ the wife knows how to manage and is clean and tidy in herself. How far will that, or twice that sum, go if she be an ignorant slattern? The chances are that such a girl knows absolutely nothing of cooking, and that she will have to arrive at even the smallest amount of such knowledge through a long series of unpalatable meals and wasted food. Perhaps it may be years before she attains to the production of any dish which can fairly be called wholesome or nourishing; but surely she is not to be blamed for her ignorance. She has gone straight from her school to a situation whose duties have never taken her into the kitchen, and she finds herself at twenty-five years of age at the head of a working man’s home, with no more notion of how to manage their income comfortably than if she were an infant. She has hitherto had no opportunity of learning how to cook; but if she has been taught to be thoroughly clean and tidy in her habits and ways, she may rest assured that half the battle is won. The other half, the National School of Cookery at South Kensington steps in to help her to win, and it is to be hoped that in due time, by the establishment of branch institutions all over the kingdom, by means of lectures and demonstrations (for cooking cannot be taught by theory), any young woman in such a position will know where to go if she wants to learn how to cook the food her husband’s wages enable her to provide. But _cleanliness_ she must teach herself, and practise it diligently in her little kitchen, for without it she can never be a good cook, no matter how successful she be in the matter of bread, or how deftly she may handle her frying or sauce pan.

LESSON V. THE PREPARATIONS OF FLOUR USED AS FOOD.

It is well known that so far as actual nutritive power goes, both oats and barley, to say nothing of maize, rye, the millets, and rice, contain as much (oats, indeed, more) valuable material for the maintenance of the human body as wheat does; that is to say, they all contain certain proportions of starch, protein, or the nutritive ingredient, represented by oily or fatty matter, besides sundry saline particles. All these are indispensable to the building up of the human body. Why then do we find wheat more cultivated and used in greater quantities by all the civilized nations than any of the other cereals? The only reason can be that wheaten flour alone, of all these farinaceous foods, will make fermented bread.

I used at one time to think that bread-making must be the very simplest thing in the world, but when I came to be face to face with flour and yeast I found it was not so easy a matter to produce light good bread. These pages are not written therefore for the instruction of bakers or those fortunate people who have learned, at an age and under circumstances when learning is easy, how to make bread, but with the hope that they may prove ever so slight a practical help to those who are as profoundly ignorant as I was, not so long ago.

First of all the yeast has to be thought of. When near a town this thorn in the path of the anxious bread-maker is removed by the facility with which brewer’s or ready-prepared baker’s yeast can be procured. Brewer’s yeast is simply the scum which rises to the top of the malt during the process of fermentation, and is of no use to the beer, or wort. The brewer is therefore glad to dispose of it, and the baker takes it off his hands. But he does not put it raw into his bread. A special ferment is first obtained from mealy potatoes, by boiling them in water, mashing them, and allowing them to cool to a temperature of about 80° of Fahrenheit. Yeast is then added to them, and in a few hours they will get into a state of active fermentation with a sort of cauliflower head. Water should now be gently poured into this mixture, and it must be strained, after which a very little flour should be lightly sprinkled into it. In five or six hours the whole will rise to a fine _sponge_, when more water must be added, and a little salt, and then the yeast is fit to use. It may now be bottled, but it is not advisable to make a great deal at a time. On account of the fermentation, yeast-bottles can only be kept from bursting by plugging their mouths with soft paper or cotton-wool. If neither the fresh yeast from the brewers (which will not keep by itself for more than a day or two) or the dried yeast, which keeps a long time, can be obtained, then it will be necessary to boil some dried hops in a very little water, put some sugar to them, and add this compound when in a state of fermentation to the mashed potatoes instead of the brewer’s yeast.

Having procured or made the yeast, the next thing is to put the flour in a large tin milk-pan, make a hole in the centre of the soft white heap, and pour in a small cupful of yeast mixed with a large cupful of warm water. A little of the flour is stirred in to this liquid so as to make it rather more of a paste, and then the whole is covered with a clean cloth and set to _work_ during the whole night. Great care must be taken not to put it in too hot a place, as it will become dry and crusty in the morning, and make heavy, tasteless bread. On the other hand, if the temperature be too low, the flour will be dull and cold, the mixture will not have penetrated it, and the bread will not rise. But, supposing that the happy medium has been hit, and that the gas contained in the yeast has made its subtle way among the flour, then more water must be added by degrees and a very little salt. The whole mass should then be lightly kneaded by _very_ clean hands, and when it has attained a certain elastic consistency it should be quickly cut into separate portions, dropped into well-floured tins (only half fill them with the dough), which must instantly be placed in the oven. The oven should be fairly hot to begin with, and its heat increased until the end. From time to time a clean knife should be thrust into the loaf; if it comes out with a tarnish on the bright blade, as though it had been breathed upon, then the bread is not sufficiently baked, and there is no use in taking it out of the oven until the knife can be readily drawn out with a perfectly undimmed surface. The real art of bread-making consists in the dough not being too stiff at first to resist the entrance of the gas, nor too soft to permit the gas to pass through it quickly. It should also be sufficiently kneaded so that the gas may become well distributed throughout the mass, yet not over-kneaded, in which case a good deal of it will have escaped, and the bread will consequently be heavy.

The difference between biscuits and bread is that there is no yeast in the composition of the former; they are also for the most part unleavened and very highly dried. Though valuable as a temporary substitute for bread, they can never be so wholesome from the absence of the water which is absorbed in the process of drying or baking. Biscuits should invariably be taken with ever so small a quantity of liquid, for by themselves they either absorb too much fluid from the juices of the stomach, and so produce indigestion, or they fail to obtain as much fluid as they require from those sources, and therefore remain a long time undigested. Cakes are made by the substitution of soda or carbonic acid for yeast, and the addition of sugar, fat, and eggs. Of all these materials the sugar is the wholesomest and should be the most freely used. The other ingredients are more difficult of digestion.

Before leaving the subject of bread, it will be as well to notice the extraordinary difference between batches of bread. It is no reason because a household receives excellent bread one week—either from the baker’s shop or its own kitchen—that the next week’s baking will not be heavy and bad. This is because we trust so entirely to the good old rule of thumb in our kitchens, scorning to make the temperature of the oven a certainty by means of a thermometer. Half, and more than half, of the hard baking and the over or under boiling and frying with which we are afflicted arises from the extraordinary prejudice which exists against the daily use of this indispensable little instrument. It is the only reliable way of making sure of the oven, or the water, or the fat being of exactly the right temperature; and yet what cook who “respects herself” would at present deign to use a thermometer, still less even a charming little contrivance which has been invented specially for her use, and is called a frimometer?

But to touch upon some of the other uses of flour. We are apt to look upon macaroni as a luxury for the tables of the rich, when it is really so low in price that it is within the reach of those who have any choice at all as to what they shall eat. It is considered a foreign composition, unworthy to take a place among the more solid flesh-formers dear to the heart of the Englishman; but if he understood what it is made from, he might perhaps modify his contempt for one of the most nourishing and wholesome forms in which he can eat wheaten flour. Maccaroni, then, is made by the simplest imaginable process, and there is no reason in the world why its manufacture should not be carried on in England, as indeed it is. The finest wheaten flour is made into a peculiar smooth paste or dough, and afterwards driven through a cylinder which cuts it into ribands or tubes. Wheaten flour contains, of course, precisely the same amount of nourishment, whether it be made into bread or into the _pasta_ from which macaroni is cut; but whereas bread can scarcely be cooked again (except as toast), there are many ways in which macaroni can be dressed so as to form a delicious food. Simply boiled with milk and a little sugar it would be a wholesome and agreeable change in children’s diet, and we must remember that for children who are born with soft bones—that is, with too little phosphate of lime in their bones—a diet of wheat will tend, more than anything else, to form this deposit. When I say wheat, I include macaroni therefore, and semolina, which is the very small grain left after grinding wheat in a coarse mill. Such a mode of grinding gives but a small proportion of flour, and a certain larger residue of coarse flour or fine grains, and these grains are known as “semolina.” They are chiefly obtained from the most nourishing of all the wheats, the red-grained wheat grown in Southern Europe, and especially in the Danubian Principalities.

LESSON VI. POTATOES AND OTHER VEGETABLES.

Although it is rather a departure from the plan I pursued in the First Part to speak in this lesson about potatoes, it is natural to me to do it, because, so far as my practical experience—which was once _in_-experience, remember—goes, it is almost as difficult to boil a potato properly as to bake good bread. In the first place, we have one of the highest chemical authorities on our side for saying that on both wholesome and economical grounds potatoes should always be boiled _in_ their skins. They do not look quite so well if they have to be peeled afterwards, but not only is the actual material wasted by the process of peeling—especially where there are no pigs to eat the peelings—but a great deal of the starchy substance, which is exactly what makes the potato so nourishing, is wasted. In roasted or baked potatoes, which have been peeled before cooking, the loss in weight from the skin and the drying is actually a quarter of the whole. It is curious to learn that potatoes which come to us from the bog lands of Ireland are far less watery and produce more starch than those which are grown on the dry, light soils of Yorkshire. This innate dryness is one reason why the Irish potato contains so much more nourishment than an English one. The potato was first grown by Sir Walter Raleigh in his garden at Youghal, in Ireland, and it is not much more than a century since its cultivation became general in England. The first potatoes grown in England came from a ship wrecked on Formby Point, near Liverpool. The tubers were planted by chance on the soil close by, which closely resembled that of Ireland, and no part of their new home has ever suited them better. The potato, though, as we have seen, of a certain appreciable value as a flesh-former, is not to be depended upon entirely as a force-producer, for the proportion of water in 100 parts is 75·2. Next to water, its peculiarly nourishing starch is most largely represented, and stands at 15·5. From this starch also a _pasta_ can be made which gives a fair macaroni, but of course the advantages of the wheaten paste would be absent.

In ordinary kitchens where a steamer is used, the process of boiling a potato is easy enough, and that dry mealiness dear to the heart of a good cook can be reckoned upon. But if only a saucepan be attainable, then, having well washed—nay, even scrubbed and _brushed_—your potatoes, put them into it with _cold_ water; add a little salt when the water boils; at first it should only be allowed to boil slowly, but it may boil as fast as you like during the last five minutes. Some varieties of the potato can be cooked much sooner than others; there is often the difference between them of twenty minutes and three-quarters of an hour. From time to time they must be tried with a fork, which should go in freely when they are sufficiently boiled. The potatoes being now cooked enough, pour off as much water as can possibly be got rid of. Sprinkle a little more salt, take off the lid of the saucepan and set it on again in such a manner that the steam can escape, but keep the saucepan for a few minutes on the oven to dry the potatoes thoroughly. The saucepan should be lightly shaken from time to time to prevent the potatoes sticking to the bottom. Then serve either in a wooden bowl, with a clean cloth or a napkin, or else in a dish with perforated holes in the cover so that the vapour can escape. If potatoes form the principal diet of a family, eggs should be added where practicable, and milk, or dripping, or any sort of fat, as the potato itself is very deficient in albumen and fat.

Next to the potato, the cabbage is the most widely cultivated of all vegetables, yet it is far inferior to the others in the nutriment contained in a given weight. In point of value the parsnip ranks next to the potato as a flesh-former, and possesses six per cent. of carbon. Parsnips are followed closely by carrots and onions, though the latter are principally used as a relish. But all vegetables are chiefly valuable for their anti-scorbutic properties, and as a flavouring for insipid food. Lentils are particularly nutritious, and the food sold under the name of “Revalenta Arabica” is only the meal of the lentil after being freed from its indigestible outer skin. In peas we find a great deal of caseine; hence, in an analytical table they rank next to wheat as a flesh and force-producer, whereas we should find the other vegetables relegated under the head of “Non-nitrogenous substances,” that is to say, substances which, taken by themselves without milk, butter, or fat of any kind, are absolutely incapable of producing either flesh or force. In Ireland it is the milk taken with the potato which makes it so nourishing. If potatoes were eaten quite alone, the consumer would need to eat an enormous quantity to keep himself in any sort of condition, and he would never be able to do any amount of real hard work in the open air.

It is quite certain that sufficient value is not attached in England to the importance of the cultivation of vegetables. If a few leeks or sweet herbs, a row of potatoes, or a dozen cabbages, were planted in many a tiny spot beside a cottage door, which spot at present is but a puddle or a down-trodden mass of caked mud, the hungry mouths inside would stand a better chance of being filled. When a poor woman has to go with her pence in her hand and buy every onion or potato or sprig of thyme which she wants to improve the flavour of the family meal, the chances are she will look upon them—and very justly, too—as luxurious additions to the bill of fare, and do without them as much as possible. All over France the poorest peasant has her “flavourings” close to her hand; and it is difficult to over-estimate the boon which a few common vegetables and herbs are, when used to assist in converting a scrap of bacon, a bone, and a little pea-meal into a warm, comforting, nourishing mid-day meal.

Mr. Ruskin attaches great importance to the cultivation of the land—the making the best of every inch of our own native soil; but I fear he wants to try experiments, and grow all sorts of curious things in every conceivable part of the British Isles, whereas I only confine my ambition to those little shabby nooks and odds and ends of ground which lurk around stray cottages, whose occupants evidently prefer sitting in the tap-room of the “Chequers” to digging for an hour in a scrap of garden morning and evening. Perhaps, if, in time, we are able to show the working man how enormously his culinary comfort can be increased by a little vegetable flavouring, he may take to planting and cultivating even a square rood of ground, if that be all he can call his own. I say nothing of the gain to health, for that is so easily ascertained by his own or his neighbour’s experience. The seeds of common vegetables are very easily procured—in fact, they can almost be had for the asking; and, at all events, one day’s beer-money would go a long way towards keeping a family in onions for a year if laid out in seed. A little soup or stew thus flavoured without extra expense, would surely be a vast gain on the hunch of dry bread and mug of weak, cold coffee, which I have often seen a labourer eating for his dinner. Then there only remains the trouble to be considered; and a lazy man will have to make twice as much exertion in the long run to keep body and soul together.

I repeat: it is not actual money which is absolutely wanting in such cases. It is that the few pence are generally laid out in the most improvident way—in a way which becomes gross extravagance when it is contrasted with what the same pittance would produce if properly managed. I have no hope of this little book, or any other book, great or small, working a miraculous and thorough reform, and converting every cottage in the country into a smiling abode of peace and plenty. What I _do_ aim at and look forward to is, first, to arouse attention to the subject in those whose social rank is _above_ that of the hand-to-mouth working man; and next, to induce rich people to take as much trouble and spend as much money in providing their servants and workmen with the opportunity of learning _how_ to cook their food, as they now do in teaching them and their children to read and write.

Mr. Ruskin, in his “Fors Clavigera,” insists very strongly that in his model farm, his land bought out of the proceeds of the “St. George’s Fund,” every girl shall be taught “at a proper age to cook all ordinary food exquisitely.” But I would go a step beyond, and I would have every boy taught also. I don’t know about the cooking exquisitely! I should be satisfied, at first, if every boy and girl could be taught to cook even a little. For a knowledge of cooking, at all events in its simplest form, appears to me to be every whit as necessary for a man, if he is to move about the world at all, as it is for a girl. If the man does _not_ move about, and is fortunate enough to marry a girl trained and taught cooking either at Mr. Ruskin’s model farm or at the National School of Cookery, then he may forget, or lay aside, his culinary lore as quickly as he pleases! But if he emigrates, or enlists as a soldier, or does any of the hundred and one things which men are obliged to do in these busy days, the chances are that he will find ever so slight a knowledge of cooking a very great boon and blessing to him.

One thing is very puzzling to me, though I know not why it should be brought in _àpropos_ of vegetables. It is the staunch conservatism, where food or cooking is concerned, of the working classes of England. In politics they are very often to a man, nay, even to a woman, advanced Liberals, to say the least of it. They are much more ready to advocate and adopt sweeping changes in things of which, after all, they cannot know a great deal; but they distrust anyone who suggests that they could improve the matters which lie close around them, and with which they are at least familiar. “My ould grandmother did it that way, and she lived till ninety,” is an unanswerable argument against making the scrap of meat into a _pot-au-feu_, and adding vegetables and meat to it, instead of frizzling and burning the same scanty portion of meat in a greasy frying-pan over a smoky fire. I feel persuaded, therefore, that the great reform in cooking and economic management of our food-material must _begin_ in the classes above the working man. When he sees and learns by experience that an ounce of meat, properly dressed, will go further in actual nourishment and strength-imparting qualities than two ounces heated in his old barbarous method, he may perhaps be induced to consent to his “missis” or the “gals” being “learned” how to cook. My own private hope—and I would almost say expectation—is, that an increase in the artisan’s or the working man’s comfort at home,—such comfort as better cooked food and more of it must surely bring,—will lead to his wages finding their way oftener into the butcher’s shop than the public-house. A well-fed man is very seldom a drunkard; and it may be that in the spread and development of an attempt at culinary reform, two birds may, all unconsciously, be killed with one stone. In improving cottage comforts we may perhaps strike a great blow (with our frying-pans and soup-kettles!) at the shining glasses and quart pots of the gin-palace. God grant that it be so!

LESSON VII. MODES OF PREPARING BROTH OR SOUP FROM BEEF.

The reason I have placed this subject in a separate lesson is because of its enormous importance in the sick-room. More delicate children are reared into health and strength, and more lives are saved, by good beef-tea than most of us have any idea of. This is the more extraordinary when we remember that even the strongest and best beef-tea contains an almost infinitesimal amount of actual nourishment. So that it is not to its capacity for supplying to the wasted and feeble human frame either strength or nourishment that we must attribute its wonderful efficacy. If the strongest beef-tea be analysed, the meat would be found to have lost in the process of turning into liquid nearly all its albumen, fibrine, and caseine. In other words, it would have parted with its most important constituents; and we might suppose it therefore to be valueless to the human system. But Experience steps in where Chemistry stops and shakes her head, and Experience declares that well-made beef-tea possesses a reparative power on a weakened digestion which nothing else in the world except milk can come near. It may not actually contain all the elements of nourishment within itself, as milk does, but it is a wonderful assimilator. It soothes and repairs and collects the enfeebled organs and juices, and enables them to return to their proper functions. Therefore we say that beef-tea is nourishing, when it is not in the least nourishing in itself, but it has the power of making ready for other substances to nourish.

Although every sort of meat can be made into soup or broth, beef makes the best and wholesomest. For one reason of this we must search in the fibrine, which holds more red juice than that of any other meat, and it is this red juice which we particularly want. Everybody knows that the leanest meat is the best for soup-making; the least particle of fat is out of place in broth or soups, and indeed renders it absolutely unwholesome as well as nauseous.

In many emergencies beef-tea has to be prepared at almost a moment’s notice, and then I would recommend that the meat be as thoroughly freed from fat as possible, chopped finely, and soaked in its own weight of cold water for ten minutes or so. Then heat it slowly to boiling-point, let it boil for two or three minutes, and you will have a strong and delicious beef-tea, better than can be obtained by boiling in the ordinary way for many hours. Another method is to place the finely-chopped meat in a large, clean jam-pot, with a little water and a pinch of salt. The mouth of the vessel should be closed by means of a tightly-tied bladder or a thick paste all over it, as if it were a meat-pudding, and placed in a saucepan half full of cold water. The saucepan should then be covered with its own lid and set upon or by the side of the fire to simmer slowly. If there be no time to let the beef-tea or essence in the jam-pot get cold, it must be skimmed as clearly as possible, and any extra globules of fat floating on the surface removed by a careful application of white blotting paper. Some people do not add any water at all to the cut-up beef, under the impression that the essence must be stronger without the addition. But my individual experience teaches me that whereas the difference in nutritive value is very slight, sick people do not like the beef-tea thus prepared, and will not take it so readily as when it has been made after the following manner. It is necessary, however, to state that the process I am now going to describe _cannot_ be hurried, and that it is therefore imperative to have one day’s notice when beef-tea made in this way is required.

Take two or three pounds of the leanest beef to be procured, add one quart of water, and two shank bones of mutton, which bones should be well washed before using. A pinch of salt, and another pinch of grated lemon-peel, or a tiny bit of the peel itself, are all I should add, for a sick person’s throat is generally too tender for pepper, and his palate too delicate for anything like flavouring or sauces. The lean meat and shank bones are to be put into a saucepan, whose white enamelled lining should be daintily and scrupulously clean, and the saucepan, with its lid fitting very close indeed, set by the side of a moderately good fire to simmer slowly the whole day long. It must never approach boiling, and yet the action of fire upon its contents should be decided, though gentle. At the last moment before shutting up for the night, strain the soup through a fine hair sieve into a clean basin, and in the morning you should find, beneath a preserving scum of fat, about a pint of clear, solid, beef jelly, which can either be eaten cold, or warmed, without the addition of one drop of water, into a delicious _clean_-tasting cup of beef-tea. In cold weather double the quantity may be made, but in that case it should be poured into _two_ basins, and the fat left to hermetically seal the second basin until it be wanted in its turn for use. In hot weather the beef-tea should be prepared fresh _every_ day for the next day’s consumption. I have seen beef-tea rendered perfectly colourless and white by repeated strainings through fine muslin sieves, but I do not know that this is any particular advantage.

In some cases, such as the terrible state of the intestines after typhoid fever, beef-tea is no use as a reparative agent when prepared after the above fashion. The meat should then not be cooked at all, only cut up as lean and fresh and full of red juice as possible, and soaked for ten or twelve hours in a small quantity of _cold_ water. This will give a liquid which has never been submitted to the action of fire, and which looks and tastes like the gravy of under-done meat, but it is of the highest reparative value to the lacerated stomach. A judicious nurse will take care that her patient never _sees_ this sort of beef-tea until he has learned to drink it freely, which he will do if not at first disgusted by the sight of the clear red fluid.

I have dwelt thus minutely on the value and process of making beef-tea because I believe it to be the strongest resource of the culinary art in sickness; but the proper preparation of soup is of great importance in all households. It is at once an economical, wholesome and savoury form of nourishing food; yet, to many a _plain_ cook, soup, unless she has costly materials bought expressly for its manufacture, merely means greasy hot water flavoured by a _soupçon_ of plate-washing! No soup should be used the same day it is made, on account of the impossibility of removing all the scum and fat. But, supposing that a scrag end of mutton, or the trimmings of cutlets, or bones with a fair amount of meat left on, should have been simmering gently all the preceding day, and allowed to get cold at night, so that the layer of fat (which can be used for other purposes) is easily removed, then we should proceed this way, always imagining it is wanted for the use of a poor and economical family. To the clear, fat-free soup, add half a tea-cupful of well-washed pearl barley or rice—and we must remember that the inferior and cheaper kind of rice does just as well as the best for this purpose—a few cleaned and cut-up vegetables, a little onion, pepper and salt, a sprig or two of herbs tied together, a little pea-meal, any cold potatoes left from yesterday’s dinner, and the whole allowed to simmer together, without removing the remains of the meat and bones, until it be wanted, great care being taken that it should not boil away. The result of this simmering _ought_ to be a nice, warm, comforting, _clean_-tasting basin of broth, very different to the weak, greasy liquid which results from a hastier preparation. It is a very common mistake with all cooks, except the very best, to put too much water in the first instance to their materials for soup, and so produce a good deal of weak, tasteless meat-tea, instead of a smaller quantity of strong, good soup. English people do not use macaroni half so freely as they might, for, apart from its nutritive value as offering such a pure form of wheaten flour, it is exceedingly cheap. Boiled with ever so little soup made in the way just described (before the addition of the rice or vegetables), it would form an excellent and wholesome change to the smallest bill of fare.

All cooks prefer beef to anything else for making soup, but a very nourishing and delicate broth can be made from two parts of veal and one part of lean beef, or from chicken or rabbit, though the latter is not advisable for sick people. Everyone knows the value of good, fat-cleared mutton broth such as I have just described, but there is a good deal of truth in the instinct which leads the sick person to prefer beef-tea, and the healthy labouring man to buy a couple of pounds of beef instead of double the quantity of any other meat. Beef contains most iron, which in the state of oxide is one of the chief constituents of the blood: and we must bear in mind that the nutriment of all carnivorous animals is derived from the blood originally. A diet, therefore, to be strengthening, must contain a certain amount of iron, and we do not obtain this so readily from any other meat as from beef.

LESSON VIII. FUEL AND FIRE.

The object of cooking is to render the flesh of animals and vegetable substances easier of mastication, and therefore easier of digestion. How this object is carried out in most English households let each declare for himself. And yet there is nothing in the world so simple and so certain in its effects as the action of fire upon food, if only we can learn to apply and to regulate that action according to certain laws. I propose therefore to devote a short lesson to each of the simplest processes of cooking.

But before doing so I may be permitted here to say a word or two about the management of the kitchen fire. Few ladies, or even those servants whose duties lie entirely upstairs, and who see a bright or blazing fire every time they go into the kitchen, can have any idea how difficult a thing it is to keep up a good fire all day. When I say a “good fire,” I mean a good _cooking_ fire—a clear, bright fire, which, without being a roaring furnace, shall yet be equal to any emergency. It can only be managed by constant small additions of coal, unless a great deal of cooking is imminent, and then of course more fuel must be added each time. But a really good cook will so contrive as to have a small, bright fire all day long, even when she is not actually cooking. Whenever I hear that a bit of bread cannot be toasted, or a cup of soup warmed, because the fire has “just been made up,” I know what has happened. The cook has allowed the fire to burn down to the last bar of the grate, and then she has emptied half a coal-scuttle on the few live embers. For about two hours, therefore, it is useless to expect any cooking from _that_ fire, and it will be fortunate if no sudden call be made for its services. Now, if the cook had watched her fire, and had kept it supplied from time to time with small portions of coal, this emergency would never have arisen. She could screw up her fireplace to very small dimensions and yet keep an excellent fire, fit for any unexpected demand. It is doubtful whether, when she acts on the momentary impulse of trying to make up for lost time, a cook has any idea of the mischief she does. Letting the kitchen fire, burn low and then flinging on coals, is not only an inconvenient, but it is a recklessly extravagant proceeding. The fire and fireplace have become thoroughly chilled, and the fresh fuel evaporates almost entirely in the form of smoke for a long time before the remainder is in a state to use for cooking.

If this rule of preventing waste by constantly adding small portions of fuel were better understood and acted upon, cooks would not have such a bitter prejudice against the use of coke. It is, of course, absolutely valueless to a half-extinguished fire, especially when, instead of being put on in small quantities, it is flung on in shovelfuls. But to an already clear, well-established fire, nothing is so satisfactory or economical an addition as a few lumps of coke judiciously put on. If frying or broiling is to be done, the fire _cannot_ be too clear, and coke, if it be properly managed, will give the clearest fire in the world, but then it requires a certain amount of intelligence and willingness on the part of the cook to use it to advantage. When I use the word cook, I do not mean only a regular servant, but any young woman who is acting, for perhaps the first time in her life, the part of cook in her husband’s, or father’s, or brother’s house. She will find her culinary labours much simplified if she keeps the needs of the kitchen fire always before her mind. I don’t mean to say that such a one may not what is called “make up” her fire, and leave it untouched between breakfast and dinner, and dinner and tea, because the chances are a hundred to one she will not need it, and her duties probably call her elsewhere; but a cook in a house where there is a family, and perhaps sickness, or even very young children, ought never for one moment to forget or neglect her fire all through the day.

I _could_ give her scientific reasons about radiation, and use many long words to prove to her why, if she keeps her grate well blacked and polished, she will find her fire burns better and gives out more heat, but I prefer to appeal to everybody’s experience and common sense if such warmth and brilliancy be not the result of a beautifully clean and shining fireplace.

To Sir Benjamin Thomson (an English knight and an American by birth, but better known to us by his Bavarian title of Count Rumford) we owe perhaps more improvement in the economical management of fuel and the construction of stoves and fireplaces, with due regard to that economy, than to anyone else in modern times. He was induced to turn his attention to the subject by the scarcity of fuel on the Continent, and his ideas naturally expanded and enlarged themselves by constant practice. At last he succeeded in inventing a method of heating houses and of cooking food which did not require much more than half the usual amount of fuel, and this economy in firing became such a mania with him that the joke of the day used to be that his highest ambition was to be able to cook his own dinner by means of his neighbour’s smoke.

However that may have been, it is very certain that to Count Rumford we owe a great increase of our knowledge on such subjects, and the reason I mention him particularly in this place is that he never seemed to weary of insisting on the necessity of a well-kept brightly-blacked fireplace to the due economy of the fuel used in it. He explained incessantly how that kind of heat which is absorbed by either black or white surfaces is totally devoid of light, and may almost be considered as pure, radiant heat. So that the first point to be taught, in ever so humble a kitchen, is that the fireplace should be exquisitely clean, besides well and brightly blacked, in order to give the fuel which will be used in it a fair chance of giving out, by radiation, every particle of its latent heat.

The next thing to be considered is the division and arrangement of that fuel, beginning from even the starting-point of lighting the fire. A careful housewife—careful either on her own account or her mistress’s—will only use half as much wood or shavings to start her fire with as a thriftless one, because she will take trouble to learn that there is a scientific but perfectly simple mode of laying and lighting a fire. She will be told in theory, and prove for herself by practice, that she must thoroughly clear out her grate, clean and brighten it up to the highest pitch, and then place in it whatever is her lightest material, her paper, or dry grass, or shavings, whatever she has at her command. Next come the slender twigs or dried sprays of heather of the country, or the neatly-cut firewood of the town. Unless all this is thoroughly dried over-night, it will be worse than useless, and it is in attention to details of this sort that true economy consists. A damp bundle of wood or twigs will smoulder, and be consumed without making any appreciable difference in the state of the fire, whereas half the quantity, when thoroughly dry, will start a satisfactory blaze in a few minutes. Then should the cinders be thoroughly and carefully sifted; and nowa-days I have no hesitation in saying this is as imperatively necessary in a palace as in a cottage, on account of the increased price of coal. No cinders should be relegated to the dusthole at all, for everything, except actual dust or the hard flakes (called clinkers) left by coke, can be used. The largest cinders may be laid lightly on the logs of the blazing sticks, the smaller ones being thrown up, later, at the back. Cinders are the best material in the world for starting a fire, and even small lumps of coal should only be sparingly used at first. Above all, a beginner should be taught that her fire will _never_ light or burn up if she does not take care to establish a free circulation of air beneath. I am, of course, speaking of ordinary open fireplaces. Stoves and other patent fireplaces are generally constructed on entirely different principles, and require special instruction for the management of their fuel, but this is easily obtained from the person who fixes them.

Taking it for granted, then, that our ideal cook thoroughly understands how to light her fire, and is impressed with a due sense of the importance of a well-blacked shining kitchen-range, or humbler tiny fireplace—the rule is the same everywhere—and that she is one of those capable people who would disdain to shelter themselves behind the excuse of an ill-tempered chimney or a “bad draught,” we will presently proceed to see what she should cook upon her fire.

_THE PRINCIPLES OF DIET AND A FEW CHEAP AND EASY RECIPES._