The Chemistry of CookeryWilliams, W. Mattieu (William Mattieu)
Science
The Chemistry of Cookery
Williams, W. Mattieu (William Mattieu)
Cooking
While engaged upon your macaroni, look around at the other dishes
served to other customers. Instead of the pale slices of meat spread
out in a little puddle of pale watery liquid, that are served in
English restaurants of corresponding class, you will see dainty
morsels, covered with rich brown gravy, or surrounded by vegetables
immersed in the same. This ‘sugo’ is greatly varied according to the
requirements, by additions of stock-broth, tarragon vinegar, ketchup,
&c., but burnt flour, burnt sugar, or burnt onions, or burnt something
is the basis of it all.
To further test the flavouring properties of browning, take some
eels cut up as usual for stewing; divide into two portions; stew one
brutally—by this I mean simply in a little water—serving them with this
water as a pale gravy or juice. Let the second portion be well fried,
fully caramelised or browned, then stewed, and served with brown gravy.
Compare the result. Make a corresponding experiment with a beefsteak.
Cut it in two portions; stew one brutally in plain water; fry the
other, then stew it and serve brown.
Take a highly-baked loaf—better one that is black outside; scrape off
the film of crust that is quite black, _i.e._ completely carbonised,
and you will come to a rich brown layer, especially if you operate
upon the bottom crust. Slice off a thin shaving of this and eat it
critically. Mark its high flavour as compared with the comparatively
insipid crumb of the same loaf, and note especially the resemblance
between this flavour and that of the caramel from sugar, and that of
the browned eels and browned steak. A delicate way of detecting the
flavour due to the browning of bread is to make two bowls of bread and
milk in the same manner, one with the crust the other with the crumb of
the same loaf. I am not suggesting these as examples of better or worse
flavour, but as evidence of the fact that much flavour of some sort is
generated. It may be out of place, as I think it is, in the bread and
milk, or it may be added with much advantage to other things, as it is
by the cook who manipulates caramel and its analogues skilfully.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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