The Chemistry of CookeryWilliams, W. Mattieu (William Mattieu)
Science
The Chemistry of Cookery
Williams, W. Mattieu (William Mattieu)
Cooking
I may here mention that I have recently made some experiments on
the dissolving of cheese by adding sufficient alkali (carbonate of
potash) to neutralise the acid it contains, in order to convert the
casein into its original soluble form as it existed in the milk, and
have partially succeeded both with water and milk as solvents; but
before reporting these results in detail I will describe some of the
practically-established methods of cooking cheese that are so curiously
unknown or little known in this country.
In the fatherland of my grandfather, Louis Gabriel Mattieu, one of the
commonest dishes of the peasant who tills his own freehold and grows
his own food is a _fondu_. This is a mixture of cheese and eggs, the
cheese grated and beaten into the egg as in making omelettes, with a
small addition of new milk or butter. It is placed in a little pan like
a flower-pot saucer, cooked gently, served as it comes off the fire,
and eaten from the vessel in which it is cooked. I have made many a
hearty dinner on one of these, _plus_ a lump of black bread and a small
bottle of genuine but thin wine; the cost of the whole banquet at a
little _auberge_ being usually less than sixpence. The cheese is in a
pasty condition, and partly dissolved in the milk or butter. I have
tested the sustaining power of such a meal by doing some very stiff
mountain climbing and long fasting after it. It is rather too good—over
nutritious—for a man only doing sedentary work.
A diluted and delicate modification of this may be made by taking
slices of bread, or bread and butter, soaking them in a batter made
of eggs and milk—without flour—then placing the slices of soaked
bread in a pie-dish, covering each with a thick coating of grated
cheese, and thus building up a stratified deposit to fill the dish.
The surplus batter may be poured over the top; or if time is allowed
for saturation, the trouble of preliminary soaking may be saved by
simply pouring all the batter thus. This, when gently baked, supplies
a delicious and highly nutritious dish. We call it ‘cheese pudding’
at home, but my own experience convinces me that we make a mistake in
using it to supplement the joint. It is far too nutritious for this;
its savoury character tempts one to eat it so freely that it would be
far wiser to use it as the Swiss peasant uses his _fondu_—_i.e._ as the
substantial dish of a wholesome dinner.
I have tested its digestibility by eating it heartily for supper. No
nightmare has followed. If I sup on a corresponding quantity of raw
cheese my sleep is miserably eventful.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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