The Chemistry of CookeryWilliams, W. Mattieu (William Mattieu)
Science
The Chemistry of Cookery
Williams, W. Mattieu (William Mattieu)
Cooking
I thus found that the yolk coagulates firmly at a lower temperature
than the white. Whether this is due to a different condition of the
albumen itself or to the action of the other constituents on the
albumen, requires further research to determine. The albumen of the
yolk has received the name of ‘vitellin,’ and is usually described as
another variety differing from that of the white, as it is differently
affected by chemical reagents; but Lehmann[4] regards it as a mixture
of albumen and casein, and describes experiments which justify his
conclusion. The difference of the temperature of coagulation does not
appear to have been observed, and I cannot understand how the admixture
of casein can effect it.
When eggs are cooked in the ordinary way, the 3½ minutes’ immersion
is insufficient to allow the heat to pass fully to the middle of the
egg, and therefore the white is subjected to a higher temperature than
the yolk. In my experiment there was time for a practically uniform
diffusion of the heat throughout.
I shall describe hereafter what is called the ‘Norwegian’ cooking
apparatus, wherein fowls, &c., are cooked as the eggs were in my
hat-case.
Albumen exists in flesh as one of its juices, rather than in a
definitely-organised condition. It is distributed between the fibres of
the lean (_i.e._ the muscles), and it lubricates the tissues generally,
besides being an important constituent of the blood itself—of that
portion of the blood which remains liquid when the blood is dead—_i.e._
the serum. As blood is not an ordinary article of food, excepting in
the form of ‘black puddings,’ its albumen need not be here considered,
nor the debated question of whether its albumen is identical with the
albumen of the flesh.
Existing thus in a liquid state in our ordinary flesh meats, it is
liable to be wasted in the course of cookery, especially if the cook
has only received the customary technical education and remains in
technological ignorance.
To illustrate this, let us suppose that a leg of mutton, a slice of
cod, or a piece of salmon is to be cooked in water, ‘boiled,’ as the
cook says. Keeping in mind the results of the previously-described
experiments on the egg-albumen, and also the fact that in its liquid
state albumen is diffusible in water, the reader may now stand as
scientific umpire in answering the question whether the fish or the
flesh should be put in hot water at once, or in cold water, and be
gradually heated. The ‘big-endians’ and the ‘little-endians’ of Liliput
were not more definitely divided than are certain cookery authorities
on this question in reference to fish. Referring at random to the
cookery-books that come first to hand, I find them about equally
divided on the question.
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