INTRODUCTORY.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF COOKERY.

MISS SEDGWICK has asserted, in some of her useful books, that “the more intelligent a woman becomes, other things being equal, the more judiciously she will manage her domestic concerns.” And we add, that the more knowledge a woman possesses of the great principles of morals, philosophy and human happiness, the more importance she will attach to her station, and to the name of a “good housekeeper.” ^* It is only the frivolous, and those who have been superficially educated, or only instructed in showy accomplishments, who despise and neglect the ordinary duties of life as beneath their notice. Such persons have not sufficient clearness of reason to see that “Domestic Economy” includes every thing which is calculated to make people love home and feel happy there.

One of the first duties of woman in domestic life is to understand the quality of provisions and the preparation of wholesome food.

The powers of the mind, as well as those of the body, are greatly dependent on what we eat and drink. The stomach must be in health, or the brain cannot act with its utmost vigor and clearness, nor can there be strength of muscle to perform the purposes of the will.

But further, woman, to be qualified for the duty which Nature has assigned her, that of promoting the health, happiness and improvement of her species, must understand the natural laws of the human constitution, and the causes which often render the efforts she makes to please the appetite of those she loves, the greatest injury which could be inflicted upon them. Often has the affectionate wife caused her husband a sleepless night and severe distress, which, had an enemy inflicted, she would scarcely have forgiven—because she has prepared for him food which did not agree, with his constitution or habits.

And many a tender mother has, by pampering and inciting the appetites of her young sons, laid the foundation of their future course of selfishness and profligacy.

If the true principles of preparing food were understood, these errors would not be committed, for the housekeeper would then feel sure that the best food was that which best nourished and kept the whole system in healthy action: and that such food would be best relished, because, whenever the health is injured, the appetite is impaired or vitiated. She would no longer allow those kinds of food, which reason and experience show are bad for the constitution, to appear at her table.

We have, therefore, sought to embody, from reliable sources,^* the philosophy of Cookery, and here give to those who consult our “New Book” such prominent facts as will help them in their researches after the true way of living well and being well while we live.

Modern discovery has proved that the stomach can create nothing; that it can no more furnish us with flesh out of food, in which, when swallowed, the elements of flesh are wanting, than the cook can send us up roast beef without the beef to roast. There was no doubt as to the cook and the beef, but the puzzle about the stomach came of our not knowing what matters various sorts of food really did contain; from our not observing the effects of particular kinds of food when eaten without anything else for some time, and from our not knowing the entire uses of food. But within the last few years measures and scales have told us these things with just the same certainty as they set out the suet and raisins, currants, flour, spices, and sugar, of a plum-pudding, and in a quite popular explanation it may be said that we need food that as we breathe it may warm us, and to renew our bodies as they are wasted by labor. Each purpose needs a different kind of food. The best for the renewal of our strength is slow to furnish heat; the best to give us heat will produce no strength. But this does not tell the whole need for the two kinds of food. Our frames are wasted by labor and exercise; at every move some portion of our bodies is dissipated in the form either of gas or water; at every breath a portion of our blood is swallowed, it may be said, by one of the elements of the air, oxygen; and of strength-giving food alone it is scarce possible to eat enough to feed at once the waste of our bodies, and this hungry oxygen. With this oxygen our life is in some sort a continual battle; we must either supply it with especial food, or it will prey upon ourselves;—a body wasted by starvation is simply eaten up by oxygen. It likes tat best, so the fat goes first; then the lean, then the brain; and if from so much waste, death did not result, the sinews and very bones would be lost in oxygen.

The more oxygen we breathe the more need we have to eat. Every one knows that cold air gives a keen appetite. Those who in town must tickle their palates with spices and pickles to get up some faint liking for a meal, by the sea, or on a hill-side, are hungry every hour of the day, and the languid appetite of summer and crowded rooms, springs into vigor with the piercing cold and open air of winter. The reason of this hungriness of frosty air is simply that our lungs hold more of it than they do of hot air, and so we get more oxygen, a fact that any one can prove, by holding a little balloon half filled with air near the fire, it will soon swell up, showing that hot air needs more room than cold.

But the oxygen does not use up our food and frames without doing as good service; as it devours it warms us. The fire in the grate is oxygen devouring carbon, and wherever oxygen seizes upon carbon, whether in the shape of coals in a stove or fat in our bodies, the result of the struggle (if we may be allowed the phrase) is heat.

In all parts of the world, at the Equator and the Poles, amidst eternal ice and under a perpendicular sun, in the parched desert and on the fresh moist fields of temperate zones, the human blood is at the same heat; it neither boils nor freezes, and yet the body in cold air parts with its heat, and just as we can keep an earthenware bottle filled with boiling water, hot, by wrapping it in flannel, can we keep our bodies warm by covering them closely up in clothes. Furs, shawls, and horse-cloths have no warmth in themselves, they but keep in the natural warmth of the body. Every traveler knows that starting without breakfast, or neglecting to dine on the road, he feels more than usually chilly; the effect is very much the same as if he sat to his meals on the same cold day in a room without a lire; the internal fuel, the food, which is the oil to feed life’s warming lamp, is wanting. On this account, a starving man is far sooner frozen to death than one with food in his wallet. The unfed body rapidly cools down to the temperature of the atmosphere, just as the grate cools when the fire has gone out. Bodily heat is not produced in any one portion of the body, but in every atom of it. In a single minute about twenty-five pounds of blood are sent flowing through the lungs, there the whole mass meets the air, sucks in its oxygen, and speeding on carries to every portion of the frame the power which may be said to light up every atom of flesh, nerve, and bone, and to keep the flame throughout the body ever burning with the fresh warmth of life.

In accordance with these facts we find men all over the world acting instinctively. In a cold climate, either by necessity or choice, we exert ourselves, quicken the blood’s speed, breathe rapidly, take in oxygen largely; in short, fan the flame which quick-returning hunger makes us feed. Even the least civilized follow correctly the natural law; the fruit so largely eaten by the native inhabitants of the tropics contains in every 100 ozs. not more than 12 of direct heat-producing elements, whilst the blubber and oil of the Esquimaux have in every 100 ozs. somewhere about 80 ozs. of such elements. Nor is it possible without injurious effects to live in opposition to this instinct, which science has shown to be in strict accordance with the intention of nature.

So far therefore we have evidence that good may come of method in cookery.^* Plum-pudding is no dish for the dog-days, but its suet blunts the keen tooth of winter. Nor is it a mere sentimental sympathy that makes the wish to give the poor a good Christmas dinner Scant fare makes cold more bitter. Those who, poorly clad, must face the wintry wind unfed, shiver doubly in the blast. The internal fire sinks for want of fuel, and the external air drinks up the little warmth the slow consuming system gives.

Milk, when a little rennet is poured into it, becomes curd and whey. The curd, chemists call animal casein.

When the water in which the meal of peas, beans, or lentils has been steeped for some time, is warmed, and a little acid is poured into it, it also gives a curd, called vegetable casein, which is precisely the same as the curd of the milk, and contains, like it, all the ingredients of the blood.

There is, then, no difficulty in understanding how one may live on peas, beans, &c., just as on milk or meat.

When the white of egg is poured into boiling water, it becomes firm; the substance so formed is called animal albumen, and is identical with the albumen of the blood.

When vegetables are pounded in a mortar, the fresh juice expressed, lets fall a sediment which grass gives out largely, and which is also to be had from all kinds of grain. This deposit is the same as the fibrin or lean of flesh. When the remaining clear piece is boiled, a thick jelly-like substance is formed. Cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, and asparagus are especially rich in this coagulating substance, which is the same thing as white of egg or animal albumen. It is called, therefore, vegetable albumen, and is, in common with the white of egg, identical with the albumen of blood, which with the fibrin, whether animal or vegetable, is the source of every portion of the human body.

We see, therefore, that the cattle have in peas and beans as casein, in corn and grass as fibrin, in sundry vegetables as albumen, the very materials of their flesh; and that, whether we live upon grain or pulse, beef or mutton, milk or eggs, we are in fact eating flesh; in meat, diet ready made; in the case of the others, diet containing the fit ingredients of preparation. Nor are we left in the least shadow of doubt that albumen, of whatever kind, is sufficient to produce flesh, for not only do we find every ingredient of flesh contained in it, but we can turn the flesh and fibrin of the blood back to albumen.^*

But besides the flesh-making ingredients, namely, the albumen and fibrin, we have shown that it is needful the blood should have food for oxygen; this also is contained in milk, grain, pulse, vegetables and meat. In the meat as fat, which more or less the juices of the meat and even the lean contain, in the pulse, grain, potatoes, as starch, in the vegetables, as sugar of various kinds, and in milk, as sugar of milk.

At first sight, few things seem less alike than starch and sugar, but modern discovery had proved that our saliva—the natural moisture of the mouth (which in its froth, as it is swallowed with every mouthful of food, always contains air) has power, when mixed with moistened starch at the heat of the stomach, to turn the starch into sugar; and again we find that butter and fat contain the same ingredients as starch and sugar, but with this difference, that ten ounces of fat will feed as much oxygen as twenty-four ounces of starch. Grains, vegetables, milk, and meats differ from each other, and amongst themselves in their quantities of flesh-producing and oxygen-feeding substances; but whether the oxygen feeders be in the form of sugar or fat, we can tell exactly how much starch they amount to, and the following list taken from Baron Leibig’s Familiar Letters on Chemistry, in this way shows the relative value of the several kinds of food in flesh-producing, and oxygen-feeding, or warmth-giving ingredients.

	Flesh producing.	Warmth giving
Human milk has for every ten flesh-producing parts	10	40
Cows’ milk	10	30
Lentils	10	21
Horse beans	10	22
Peas	10	23
Fat mutton	10	27
Fat pork	10	30
Beef	10	17
Hare	10	2
Veal	10	1
Wheat flour	10	46
Oatmeal	10	50
Rye flour	10	57
Barley	10	57
White potatoes	10	86
Black ditto	10	115
Rice	10	123
Buckwheat flour	10	130

Here, then, we have proof of the value of variety in food, and come upon what may be called the philosophy of Cookery.^* In our food the proportions of human milk are the best we can aim at; it has enough of flesh-producing ingredients to restore our daily waste and enough of warmth-giving to feed the oxygen we breathe. To begin with the earliest making of dishes, we find that cows’ milk has less of oxygen-feeding ingredients in a given measure than human milk; a child would, therefore, grow thin upon it unless a little sugar were added; wheat flour has, on the other hand, so much an excess of oxygen feeding-power as would fatten a child unhealthily, and it should therefore have cows’ milk added to reduce the fattening power.

The same sort of procedure applies in greater or less degree to all dishes. Veal and hare stand lowest in the list for their oxygen-feeding qualities, and, on this account, should be eaten with potatoes or rice, which stand highest, and with bacon and jelly which furnish in their fat and sugar the carbon wanting in the flesh. With the above table before us, and keening in mind the facts already detailed, it is clear that cookery should supply us with a mixed diet of animal and vegetable food, and should aim so to mix as to give us for every ounce of the flesh-making ingredients in our food, four ounces of oxygen-feeding ingredients. It is clear, also, that the most nourishing or strength-giving of all foods are fresh red meats, they are flesh ready made, and contain, besides, the iron which gives its red color to the blood, being short of which the blood lacks vitality, and wanting which it dies.

To preserve in dressing the full nourishment of meats, and their properties of digestiveness, forms a most important part of the art of cooking; for these ends the object to be kept in mind is to retain as much as possible the juices of the meat, whether roast or boiled. That, in the case of boiling meat is best done by placing it at once in briskly boiling water; the albumen on the surface and to some depth, is immediately coagulated, and thus forms a kind of covering which neither allows the water to get into the meat, nor the meat juice into the water. The water should then be kept just under boiling until the meat be thoroughly done, which it will be when every part has been heated to about 165 degrees, the temperature at which the coloring matter of the blood coagulates or fixes; at 133 degrees the albumen sets, but the blood does not, and therefore the meat is red and raw.

The same rules apply to roasting: the meat should first be brought near enough a bright fire to brown the outside, and then should be allowed to roast slowly.

Belonging to this question of waste and nourishment it is to be noted, that the almost everywhere-agreed-upon notion that soup, which sets into strong jelly, must be the most nutritious, is altogether a mistake. The soup sets because it contains the gelatine or glee of the Sinews, flesh, and bones: but on this imagined richness alone it has, by recent experiments, been proved that no animal can live. The jelly of bones boiled into soup, can furnish only jelly for our bones; the jelly of sinew or calf’s feet can form only sinew; neither flesh nor its juices set into a jelly. It is only by long boiling we obtain a soup that sets, but in a much less time we get all the nourishing properties that meat yields in soups which are no doubt useful in cases of recovery from illness when the portions of the system in which it occurs have been wasted, but in other cases, though easily enough digested, jelly is unwholesome, for it loads the blood with not only useless but disturbing products. Nor does jelly stand alone. Neither can we live on meat which has been cleared of fat, long boiled, and has had all the juice pressed out of it; a dog so fed, lost in forty-three days a fourth of his weight; in fifty-five days he bore all the appearance of starvation, and yet such meat has all the muscular fibre in it in the same way, animals fed on pure casein, albumen, fibrin of vegetables, starch, sugar, or fat, died, with every appearance of death by hunger.

Further experiment showed that these worse than useless foods were entirely without certain matters which are always to be found in the blood, namely, phosphoric acid, potash, soda, lime, magnesia, oxide of iron,^* and common salt (in certain of these we may mention, by way of parenthesis, that veal is especially deficient, and hence its difficulty of digestion and poor nutrient properties.) These salts of the blood, as they are termed in chemistry, are to be found in the several wheys and juices of meat, milk, pulse, and grain. Here then was the proof complete, that such food, to support life, must contain the several ingredients of the blood, and that the stomach cannot make, nor the body do without the least of them.

It is an established truth in physiology, that man is omnivorous— that is, constituted to eat almost every kind of food which, separately, nourishes other animals. His teeth are formed to masticate and his stomach to digest flesh, fish, and all farinaceous and vegetable substances—he can eat and digest these even in a raw state; but it is necessary to perfect them for his nourishment in the most healthy manner, that they be prepared by cooking—that is, softened by the action of fire and water.

In strict accordance with this philosophy, which makes a portion of animal food necessary to develop and sustain the human constitution, in its most perfect state of physical, intellectual and moral strength and beauty, we know that now in every country, where a mixed diet is habitually used, as in the temperate climates, there the greatest improvement of the race is to be found, and the greatest energy of character. It is that portion of the human family, who have the means of obtaining this food at least once a day, who now hold dominion over the earth. Forty thousand of the beef-fed British govern and control ninety millions of the rice-eating natives of India.

In every nation on earth the rulers, the men of power, whether princes or priests, almost invariably use a portion of animal food. The people are often compelled, either from poverty or policy, to abstain.—Whenever the time shall arrive that every peasant in Europe is able to “put his pullet in the pot, of a Sunday,” a great improvement will have taken place in his character and condition; when he can have a portion of animal food, properly cooked, once each day, he will soon become a man.

In our own country, the beneficial effects of a generous diet, in developing and sustaining the energies of a whole nation, are clearly evident. The severe and unremitting labors of every kind, which were requisite to subdue and obtain dominion of a wilderness world, could not have been done by a half-starved, suffering people. A larger quantity and better quality of food are necessary here than would have supplied men in the old countries, where less action of body and mind are permitted.

Still, there is great danger of excess in all indulgences of the appetite; even when a present benefit may be obtained, this danger should never be forgotten. The tendency in our country has been to excess in animal food. The advocates of the vegetable diet system had good cause for denouncing this excess, and the indiscriminate use of flesh. It was, and now is, frequently given to young children—infants before they have teeth,—a sin against nature, which often costs the life of the poor little sufferer; it is eaten too freely by the sedentary and delicate; and to make it worse still, it is eaten, often in a half-cooked state, and swallowed without sufficient chewing. All these things are wrong, and ought to be reformed.

I hope this “New Book of Cookery” will have some effect in enlightening public opinion on the proper kinds of food, and on the best manner of preparing it.

It is generally admitted that the French excel in the economy of their cooking. By studying the appropriate flavors for every dish, they contrive to dress all the broken pieces of meats, and make a variety of dishes from vegetables at a small expense.

Next to the knowledge of the differences in the human constitution, and the nature of the food proper for man, this study of flavors and art o: re-cooking to advantage is to be prized by the good housekeeper. Every family who has a garden spot should cultivate those vegetables and herbs which are requisite for seasoning—horse-radish, onions, celery, mustard, capsicum, (red-pepper,) sage, summer savory, mint, &c. &c. are easily raised. These, if rightly prepared, will be sufficient for all common culinary purposes, and a little care and study will enable the housekeeper to flavor her meats, gravies, and vegetables in the best manner.

Bear in mind that in preparing food, three things are to be united, the promotion of health, the study of economy, and the gratification of taste.

Times of taking Food.—Nature has fixed no particular hours for eating. When the mode of life is uniform, it is of great importance to adopt fixed hours; when it is irregular, we ought to be guided by the real wants of the system as dictated by appetite.

A strong laboring man, engaged in hard work, will require food oftener and in larger quantities than an indolent or sedentary man.

As a general rule, about five hours should elapse between one meal and another—longer, if the mode of life be indolent; shorter, if it be very active.

When dinner is delayed seven or eight hours after breakfast, some slight refreshment should be taken between.

Young persons when growing fast, require more food and at shorter intervals than those do who have attained maturity.

Children under seven years of age, usually need food every three hours: a piece of bread will be a healthy lunch, and a child seldom eats bread to excess.

Those persons who eat a late supper should not take breakfast till one or two hours after rising. Those who dine late, and eat nothing afterwards, require breakfast soon after rising.

Proper quantity of Food.—As a general fact, those who can obtain sufficient food, eat much more than is required for their sustenance.

Children should never be fed or tempted to eat when appetite is satisfied; and grown persons should also be careful of eating beyond that point.

The indigestion so much complained of, and which causes so many disorders and sufferings in the human system, is a wise provision of nature, to prevent the repletion which would otherwise ensue, when too much food is taken.

The power of digestion is limited to the amount of gastric juice the stomach is capable of providing: exercise in the open air, promotes the secretion of the gastric juice.

It is a good and safe rule to proportion our meals to the amount of exercise we have taken; if that exercise has been in the open air, there is less danger of excess. The delicate lady, who scarcely walks abroad, should live very sparingly, or she will be troubled with nervousness, headache, and all the horrors of indigestion.

* The term housekeeper, in this book, is used in its American signification, the same as “Mistress of the family,” or “Lady of the house.”

* I have followed chiefly the system of Dr. Andrew Combe on “Diet and Health,” corroborated by the authority of Baron Leibeg in his “Familiar Letters” and “Animal Chemistry.”

* “The intelligent and experienced mother or nurse chooses for the child, ” says Leibig, “with attention to the laws, of nature; she gives him chiefly milk and farinaceous food, always adding fruits to the latter; she prefers the flesh of adult animals, which are rich in bone earth, to that of young animals, and always accompanies it with garden vegetables; she gives the child especially bones to gnaw, and excludes from its diet veal, fish, and potatoes; to the excitable child of weak digestive powers, she gives, in its farinaceous food, infusion of malt and uses milk sugar, the respiratory matter prepared by nature herself for the respiratory process, in preference to cane sugar; and she allows him the unlimited use of salt.”

* “Among all the arts known to man,” says Leibig, “there is none which enjoys a juster appreciation, and the products of which are more universally admired, than that which is concerned in the preparation of our food.

* Some determined advocates of the vegetable system maintain, that the teeth and stomach of the monkey correspond, in structure, very closely with that of man, yet it lives on fruits—therefore, if man followed nature, he would live on fruits and vegetables. But though the anatomical likeness between man and monkeys is striking, yet it is not complete; the difference may be and doubtless is precisely that which makes a difference of diet necessary to nourish and develope their dissimilar natures. Those who should live as the monkeys do would most closely resemble them.