Cookery

“ I am, in the matters of the kitchen, as will be learned from the previous chapter, no admirer of the wisdom of our ancestors. Cookery is eminently an experimental and a practical art. Each day, while it adds to our experience, should also increase our knowledge. And now that intercommunication between distant nations has become facile and frequent; now that we may make an early breakfast in London and a late dinner in Paris, it cannot be permitted that cookery should remain stationary. ”

“ The points which cooks should, in this branch of cookery, more particularly observe, are the thorough chopping of the suet, the complete mincing of the herbs, the careful grating of the bread-crumbs, and the perfect mixing of the whole. These are the three principal ingredients of forcemeats, and they can scarcely be cut too small, as nothing like a lump or fibre should be anywhere perceptible. ”

“ In any new cookery book, while no English receipt of approved excellence should be cancelled, yet there should also be given within a reasonable compass a short system of French, and a compendium of foreign, cookery. It is desirable that we should learn much from our neighbours, as I have said in a former chapter, in white and brown sauces, in veloutés, in the dressing of vegetables, in the seasoning and flavouring with ham instead of with salt, and in a more profuse use of eggs, oil, and butter. ”

“ Without doubt, the first step in gaining a mastery of cookery is to become familiar with the different methods and processes, the ways in which they are applied, and the reasons for applying them. There are numerous ways of cooking food, but the principal processes are boiling, stewing, steaming, dry steaming, braizing, fricasseeing, roasting, baking, broiling, pan broiling, frying, and sautéing. ”

“ Apart from the simple processes of roasting, baking, boiling, and stewing, nearly all our cookery has been introduced from foreign sources. The French methods of dressing fish and vegetables, are now largely introduced into English kitchens, and French borugeoise dishes have become quite popular. ”

“ The processes of food preparation.—With kitchen in order, tools ready, and food materials at hand, we are ready for the actual food preparation. A distinction is to be made between cookery and cooking. Cookery includes all the steps necessary to produce the finished product, while cooking is the actual application of heat, only one step of the whole process, though, indeed, one of the most important and difficult. ”

“ When one understands the principles of cookery this richness of flavor of meats cooked by the fireless method is not surprising. Every one knows the proverbial deliciousness of French cookery. The special peculiarity of the French cuisine is the long, slow simmering of meats in closely covered earthen pots called casseroles. The principle is essentially that of the fireless cooker, but the casserole not being insulated, the French cook is obliged to keep on supplying a sufficient degree of heat to keep the casserole warm and its contents simmering. ”

“ A general error exists in America on the subject of French cookery, which is not highly seasoned, but whose merit consists in blending flavours and in arranging compounds, in such a manner as to produce, at the same time, the lightest and most agreeable food. ”

“ These general principles readily apply to the preparation of the numberless made dishes which are the glory of European cookery, and which transform the remains of an ordinary meat breakfast into a delicious luncheon, or an inviting side-dish for dinner. The fact that the secret of all good cookery is economy, must be our apology for treating this division of our subject at some length ”

“ Rice boiled whole furnishes about half the food of mankind, and among other staple articles of vegetable food are the various kinds of pap or porridge made with wheat, barley, oats, maize, sago, cassava, &c. Looking over a modern cookery-book, it is seen what an endless list of dishes and sauces have been contrived by clever cooks, to please the palate and make one wish for more. As to progress in cookery in this way, no doubt the moderns have left the ancients behind. ”

“ The chief employment of a kitchen maid, in France, where a man cook is kept, is to wash the vegetables; and you see her swinging the salad in a wire safe after washing it delicately in fresh water. The care bestowed on these minor morals of cookery, so often wholly neglected, adds the finishing touch to the excellence of a French dinner. ”

“ A glance through these pages will show that they are confined to the simpler every-day dishes that make up the staple menu of the average American family. In cookery, as in other things, one should begin at the beginning and serve one's apprenticeship before passing on to the more complex mysteries of the craft. ”

“ the chipped plates might have been disinterred from some kitchen midden near an inhabited lake; and the chops recalled times more ancient still. They brought forcibly to one’s mind the night of ages when the primeval man, evolving the first rudiments of cookery from his dim consciousness, scorched lumps of flesh at a fire of sticks in the company of other good fellows; ”

“ When the laws which govern the application of heat are once grasped, the fundamental difficulties of roasting, boiling, grilling and frying are overcome, but this by no means comprises the whole art of cookery. ”

“ Well-educated cooks understand this distinctly, and use a deeper vessel than our common frying-pan, charge this with a quantity of fat sufficient to cover the fish, which is simply laid upon a wire support, or frying-basket, and left in the hot fat until the browning of its surface, or of the flour or bread-crumbs with which it is coated, indicates the sufficiency of the cookery. ”

“ The history of comparative cookery is bound up with the physical possibilities of each country and its products; and if we attempt to mark out stages in the evolution of cookery as a fine art, it is necessarily as understood by the so-called civilized peoples of the West in their culmination at the present day. ”

“ Make a stuffing of parsley, boiled onion, breadcrumbs, dripping, salt, pepper and one egg; stuff the breast first,then fill the body.
The young cook will do well to study her cookery book, not merely to take recipes from it, but to learn the different seasonings, flavorings and stuffings that go with the various meats, and having mastered such details, experiment on her own account. If economy is necessary in the household, she must learn to make up all cold meats and to utilize cold vegetables and scraps of dry bread, in fact, every morsel of food that comes under her hand. ”

“ The treatise is divided into ten parts: cookery contains above an hundred receipts, pickles fifty, puddings above fifty, pastry above forty, cakes forty, creams and jellies above forty, preserving an hundred, made wines forty, cordial waters and powders above seventy, medicines and salves above two hundred ”

“ We may take it that some form of cookery has existed from the earliest times, and its progress has been from the simple to the elaborate, dominated partly by the foods accessible to man, partly by the stage of civilization he has attained, and partly by the appliances at his command for the purpose either of treating the food, or of consuming it when served. ”

“ This simple experiment teaches a great deal of what is but little known concerning the philosophy of cookery. It shows in the first place that, so far as the coagulation of the albumen is concerned, the cooking temperature is not 212°, or that of boiling water, but 160°, i. e., 52° below it. Everybody knows the difference between a tender, juicy steak, rounded or plumped-out in the middle, and a tough, leathery abomination, that has been so cooked as to shrivel and curl up. ”

“ In a vast number of English kitchens the cookery fails from the hurried manner in which it is conducted, and from the excess of heat produced by the enormous coal-fires constantly kept burning there at all seasons, without which ignorant servants imagine no dinner can be properly cooked ”

“ Similar effects arise from drinking, but generally with a more rapid progress, from the extension and collapse of the vessels being more sudden and violent. Plain cookery, in the exact medium between under and over doing, is the point to be attained to render our food salutary. ”

“ The French bourgeoise cookery is an essentially slow process, by which the natural flavours of the substances are extracted by gentle means, and at the same time other flavours are blended so artfully with them that no particular one predominates. ”

“ So in Cookery. If the nature of the ingredients is well known, much fewer will do. Then, as you cannot make bad meat good, I would tell what is the best butcher's meat, the best beef, the best pieces; how to choose young fowls; the proper seasons of different vegetables; and then how to roast, and boil, and compound."
DILLY:—"Mrs. Glasse's 'Cookery,' which is the best, was written by Dr. Hill. Half the trade know this."
JOHNSON:—"Well, Sir, that shews how much better the subject of cookery may be treated by a philosopher. ”

“ Cookery, or the art of preparing good and wholesome food, and of preserving all sorts of alimentary substances in a state fit for human sustenance, of rendering that agreeable to the taste which is essential to the support of life, and of pleasing the palate without injury to the system, is, strictly speaking, a branch of chemistry; but, important as it is both to our enjoyments and our health, it is also one of the [2] least cultivated branches of that science. The culinary processes of roasting, boiling, baking, stewing, frying, broiling, the art of preserving meats, bacon, and hams ”

“ There have been borrowed by our people from the French, English, and Germans the best cooking methods of each, and, combining these with American ideas, methods, and agencies, we have developed a school of cookery purely American, which is the perfection of culinary art, at once the delight of epicures and the hope of physicians. ”

“ The action of foods upon tin cans bears a close relation to their action upon the utensils when used in fireless cookery, since there is time with the long cooking involved for similar reactions to take place in the cooker. ”

“ Old cooks are as fond of spice, as children are of sugar, and season soup, which is intended to constitute a principal part of a meal, as highly as sauce, of which only a spoonful may be relish enough for a plate of insipid viands. (See obs. to No. 355.) However, we fancy these large quantities of wine, &c. are oftener ordered in cookery books than used in the kitchen: practical cooks have the health of their employers too much at heart, and love “sauce à la langue” too well to overwine their soup, &c. ”

“ To a proper and accurate appreciation of the cookery of ancient times among ourselves, a knowledge of its condition in other more or less neighbouring countries, and of the surrounding influences and conditions which marked the dawn of the art in England, and its slow transition to a luxurious excess, would be in strictness necessary ”

“ In Eastern cookery not a single dish is dependent on the extravagant use of expensive and various ingredients which, when counted up, make food very expensive; but is dependent, and very much so, on the flavor of each different article used in the making. ”

“ In all choice cookery the appearance of dishes has to be carefully studied. However good the taste may be, the effect will be spoiled if its appearance on the table does not come up to the expectation raised by the name on the menu. For this reason the subject of garnishes requires to be considered apart from the dishes they adorn. ”

“ Perhaps herein is to be found the true philosophical cause of our own poor cookery. English cooks and housewives are ready to go mad on the subject of scouring pots and pans, but pay scant heed to what goes into, much less what comes out of them. ”

“ When this innovation was first suggested, the funny men of the newspapers seized on it as a welcome new subject for their jokes and cartoons, and even now not a few persons who have given the question insufficient thought speak of cookery as one of the fads and frills of our schools. ”

“ There you will find, too, fifty or more dry seasonings, including 11anise, basil, saffron, savoury, clove or garlic, cassia buds, bay leaf, ginger root, pepper-corns, marjoram, mint, thyme, capers and so on.
Herein lie the “secrets” of French cookery which are, in truth, not secrets at all, but merely the application of common sense to the cuisine. The French have never allowed their taste to be restricted by prejudice, so they hail a new flavor with delight rather than registering an instinctive dislike because it is not familiar. ”

“ That nothing, however, could be more incorrect, is fully proved by the rather numerous mediæval cookery books which are still preserved, and which contain chiefly directions for made dishes, many of them very complicated, and, to appearance, extremely delicate. The office of cook, indeed, was one of great importance, and was well paid; and the kitchens of the aristocracy were very extensive, and were furnished with a considerable variety of implements of cookery. ”

“ The result will be an ordinary domestic chop or steak. I apply this adjective, because in this particular effort of cookery, the grilling of chops and steaks, domestic cookery is commonly at fault. The majority of our City men find that while the joint cooked at home is better than that they usually get at restaurants and hotels, the chops and steaks are inferior. ”