Beef broth

“ If vegetables are liked in this broth, take one turnip, one carrot and one onion, cut them in shreds and boil them in the broth half an hour. In that case, the barley may be served with the vegetables in broth.
CHICKEN BROTH.
Make the same as mutton or beef broth. Boil the chicken slowly, putting on just enough water to cover it well, watching it closely that it does not boil down too much. When the chicken is tender, season with salt and a very little pepper. The yolk of an egg beaten light and added, is very nourishing. ”

“ Two pounds of muscular beef scored and cut into slices, affords a stronger and far more savoury broth, than 3 lbs. of the same beef when boiled in one piece. Cooks usually allow for good broth, one pound of muscular meat, to two quarts of water, and they suffer the fluid to simmer till reduced, by evaporation, to one pint, or one pint and a half. ”

“ The broth should cover the meat while it is stewing, and keep the slices of fat as much over it as you can; the seldomer you uncover the pot the better. When you think it sufficiently tender, which try with your finger, take it off, and, though it may appear tender enough to fall to pieces, it will harden sufficiently when it grows cold. It should remain in the pot just as it is taken off the fire till it is very nearly if not quite cold. It will eat much better for being so left, and you will also not run the risk of breaking the beef in pieces, as you would by removing it whilst hot. ”

“ Even in the case of meat which is used for the preparation of beef tea or broth, the losses of nutritive material are apparently small though much of the flavoring matter has been removed. The amount of fat found in broth varies directly with the amount originally present in the meat; the fatter the meat the greater the quantity of fat in the broth. The loss of water in cooking varies inversely with the fatness of the meat; that is, the fatter the meat the smaller the shrinkage due to loss of water. ”

“ Professor Robert Bartholow has also stated that the chemical composition of beef-tea closely resembles urine, and is more an excrementitious substance than a food. Those whose business it is to make a pure meat-broth, for the purpose of preparing therefrom a nutrient for experimenting with bacteria, cannot fail to recognise its similarity both in odour and colour to urine. Little consideration is needful to show the untruthfulness and the absurdity of the statements made by manufacturers as to the food value of these extracts. Fresh lean beef contains about 25 per cent. ”

“ When solid foods cannot be taken, the best kinds are those which contain the most nourishing properties in the smallest and most easily digested form. Prominent among these is well-made beef tea: not the greasy watery broth which so often goes by that name, but nearly pure beef juice which has been slowly extracted, with the addition of little or no water, from fresh lean beef. ”

“ Cut one pound of fleshy beef in dice, or thin slices, simmer for a short time without water, to extract the juices, then add, by degrees, one quart of water, a little salt, a piece of lemon peel, and a sprig of parsley, are the only necessary seasonings; if the broth is required to be stronger put less water. ”

“ Turn the beef every day, and well rub into it the brine which it makes. Let it remain in pickle for one month. When ready for cooking, let the beef be closely bound into shape with coarse webbing. Lay it in a large kettle or pot, and cover the beef with broth as cold as it can be to remain liquid. Add plenty of rough vegetables, such as carrots, turnips, onions, and celery, all sliced. Dry in the oven a sufficient quantity of ginger, cloves, mace, and peppercorns to make two ounces of each when dried and pounded fine in a mortar. ”

“ It is a matter of experience that beef and mutton are more easily digested than veal and pork. Veal broth, however, contains more nutritious matter than mutton broth or beef tea. Poultry and wild birds, if young, yield a tender and digestible meat. ”

“ Put the head, with a large cupful of barley, and about twice that quantity of dried pease, into a gallon of water. If green pease be used, they are put in shortly before the broth is removed from the fire. Take off the scum as it rises. When the head has boiled rather more than an hour, add carrots and turnips cut small, and afterwards some onions and parsley. The more slowly the head is boiled, the better will both the meat and soup he. A small piece of beef or mutton added, greatly improves this broth. From three to four hours' boiling is required. ”

“ The meat, vegetables, and seasonings are then taken from the kettle or saucepan; the liquor is strained, and that liquor is the best consommé that can be made; or by boiling the same, gently, in three quarts of good broth, you make consommé also.
The reason for directing to use one, two, or three fowls is, that the more fowls used, the better and richer the broth. The fowls after having been thus used may be prepared in salad, and make a very excellent dish.
One pound of beef is enough to make broth for a potage for three or four persons.
Always use fresh meat ”

“ Lean, juicy beef, mutton, or veal, form the basis of broth; procure those pieces which afford the richest succulence, and as fresh killed as possible.90-*
Stale meat will make broth grouty and bad tasted, and fat meat is wasted. ”

“ Another, or Tstchy.—Put four pounds of beef in a soup-kettle (the poorer classes always use mutton) , with a chicken or a duck, half a pound of smoked pork, same of smoked sausages, four carrots, four cloves, twelve pepper-corns, salt, two leeks, two onions, four stalks of [95] parsley, and one of celery; cover the whole with fish-broth, and set on a good fire. Skim off the scum carefully, and boil gently till the whole is done. As soon as either the chicken or duck, etc., is done, take it from the kettle. When the whole is cooked, drain. ”

“ May be defined a weak decoction of meat, slightly seasoned with the addition of aromatic herbs, roots or spices, in which the flavour of the meat greatly predominates.
To produce a high flavoured broth, it is essential that the boiling of the meat be moderate, and continued for some time; the simmering should be done in a vessel nearly closed. Cooks consider it essential that the broth be clear; the scum, or albumen of the meat, which becomes coagulated and rises to the surface during the boiling, must therefore be removed from time to time. ”

“ To make the broth good the meat should always be simmered till it is tender, and will separate without difficulty from the bones. In every case, as well of broth as of soup, in order to obtain them with the least boiling, and consequently most economically, the meat should be cut into small pieces, the bones, if large, broken, and the joints, such as those in a neck of mutton, separated, unless the meat be wanted to be served up with the broth or otherwise as a whole joint. ”

“ Every day we see exemplified the truth of the proverb, that "one man's meat is another man's poison." There are persons who relish and readily digest fat pork, and yet they cannot eat a single egg with impunity; others enjoy and easily assimilate eggs, but their stomachs cannot tolerate a particle of fat bacon.
It is not merely the composition of an aliment and its adaptability to the organism which determine its nutritive value—its digestibility and flavor are points which affect it. There are few people in these countries who are disposed to quarrel with beef ”

“ Animal broths thickened with rice, barley, or with peptonized gruel, as advised by Fothergill, or with the addition of vermicelli, are valuable aids when the palate is capricious. Raw beef is not as digestible as when the tendinous and aponeurotic structures of the muscular fibre have been softened, disintegrated, and converted into the soluble and easily-digested form of gelatin by cooking.47 Scraped raw beef, when the pulp is removed from much of the connective tissue, is easily digested by children as well as by adults. ”

“ Certainly meat cooked in a pot requires very little attention and too frequently receives none at all, as is evidence by the ragged mutton and hard-flavourless beef to which the term BOILED meat may be correctly applied. Although meat loses less weight when boiled than when roasted or baked, there is more loss of nutritive constituents, unless both the meat and the liquor in which it is cooked be consumed, for certain mineral salts, soluble substances, and a considerable quantity of gelatin, are abstracted during the process of cooking, and remain dissolved in the liquor. ”

“ The pot should be filled with cold water, and boil slowly till done, according to the size of the meat, or allow a quarter of an hour for every pound of the meat; quick boiling will make the meat hard and insipid. Be careful that it does not stop boiling, or the meat will be injured; remove the scum frequently. People are not generally aware of the injurious effects 10 from eating the flesh of diseased animals. It has been my practice to choose beef from the whiteness of the fat, and always object to it if a dark shade of yellow; let the fat be clear and thick, and the beef smooth and close ”

“ This exception should be duly noted, inasmuch as it is the one redeeming feature of such proceeding that renders it fairly well adapted for the cookery of such [125] meat as cow-heels, sheeps’-trotters, calves’-heads, shins of beef, knuckles of veal, and other viands which consist mainly of membranous, tendinous, or integumentary matter composed of gelatin. To treat the prime parts of good beef or mutton in this manner is to perpetrate a domestic atrocity. ”

“ During the sultry summer months, it is difficult to procure meat that is not either tough or tainted. It should, therefore, be well examined when it comes in, and if flies have touched it, the part must be cut off, and the remainder well wiped with a clean cloth dipped in warm water and vinegar. In loins of meat, the long pipe which runs in the cavity of the bone should be taken out, as it is apt to taint, as also the kernels of beef. Rumps and aitch-bones of beef, should not be purchased when bruised. ”

“ The thick pieces of belly meat, packed in a two-gallon jar and covered with salt or brine, will make a supply of fat pork to cook with beans and other vegetables. The tenderloin makes good roasts, the head and feet may go into head cheese or scrapple, and the trimmings and other scraps of lean meat serve for a few pounds of home-made sausage. In some large families it is found profitable to "corn" a fore quarter of beef for spring and summer use. Formerly it was a common farm practice to dry beef, but now it seems to be more usual to purchase beef which has been dried in large establishments. ”

“ An attempt is therefore made in two ways to secure a free secretion of gastric juice to act on the chief food; first, in the excitement of the appetite juice by the hors d’œuvre, and secondly, in the promotion of the flow by the action of the meat broth. It is in this way that [Pg 267] human instinct has made provisions for the digestion of the chief meal. A good meat broth can only be afforded by well-to-do people, and consequently with the poorer classes a less expensive, and, indeed, also a less effective, chemical excitant is used for awakening the early secretion. ”

“ So soon as the meat is thrown into boiling water, the albumen on the outside coagulates, surrounding the whole piece as it were with a hard crust, which does not permit the nutritive parts of the inside to escape. The same effect is produced by the roasting of the meat in an oven, although here it is not covered by water. It is more judicious, however, and more important for the household, to make good broth, and to let dinner commence with it.
For he who has been at work all the forenoon, needs such food at first as will not cause his stomach too much labor; and soup is that food. ”

“ If there is not a good quantity of fat running through it, the beef will be tough and not well flavored. The fat should be a rich clear white, just tinged with yellow, and firm, and the suet also. Heifer or cow beef is paler than ox beef, firmer grained, the fat a clear white, and the bones smaller, but it is not as rich or juicy. When the animal is too old or badly fed, it is of a dark red, the fat skinny and tough, and in very old beef a horny substance will be found running through the ribs. When it is pressed, if the meat rises quickly from the finger it is good ”

“ By well peppering meat you may keep away flies, which cause so much destruction in a short time. But a very coarse cheese-cloth, wrapped round the joint, is more effectual, if the meat is to be dressed soon. Remove the kidneys, and all the suet, from loins which are wanted to hang long, in warm or close weather, and carefully wipe and flour that part of the meat. Before you put meat which is rather stale to the fire, wipe it with a cloth dipped in vinegar. A {24}joint of beef, mutton, or venison, may be saved by being wrapped in a cloth and buried, over night, in a hole dug in fresh mould. ”

“ Do not let your butter be turned to oil before putting it on. It is best to have beef tongs to turn beef, as pricking it lets out the juices. Often turning prevents the surface from hardening and cooks it more equally.
Beef Liver.
Cut it in slices half an inch thick, pour boiling water on it, broil it with some thin slices of salt pork dipped in flour; then cut the liver and pork up into mouthfuls, put them in a frying-pan with a little butter, pepper, and salt, and stew them three or four minutes. ”

“ Any kind of meat can be used to make a meat-and-potato hash; but, of course, nothing is so good as corned beef. Cold roast, boiled, or broiled beef, mutton, lamb, veal, or tongue can be freed from skin, fat, and bones, seasoned highly with salt and pepper, and cooked like corned beef hash. Even two or three kinds of meat can be used. If it happens that you have a bit of steak, a part of a chop, and perhaps a slice of tongue, use them all. ”