The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking: Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in ClassesCampbell, Helen
General
The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking: Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes
Campbell, Helen
Cooking; Home economics
Mountain sheep and cattle have the finest-flavored meat, and are also
richest in nitrogenous matter. The mountain mutton of Virginia and North
Carolina is as famous as the English Southdown; but proper feeding
anywhere will make a new thing of the ordinary beef and mutton. When our
cattle are treated with decent humanity,--not driven days with scant food
and water, and then packed into cars with no food and no water, and driven
at last to slaughter feverish and gasping in anguish that we have no right
to permit for one moment,--we may expect tender, wholesome, well-flavored
meat. It is astonishing that under present conditions it can be as good as
it is.
In well-fed animals, the fat forms about a third of the weight, the
largest part being in the loin. In mutton, one-half is fat; in pork,
three-quarters; while poultry and game have very little.
The amount of bone varies very greatly. The loin and upper part of the leg
have least; nearly half the entire weight being in the shin, and a tenth
in the carcass. In the best mutton and pork, the bones are smaller, and
fat much greater in proportion to size.
VEAL and LAMB, like all young meats, are much less digestible than beef or
mutton. Both should have very white, clear fat; and if that about the
kidneys is red or discolored, the meat should be rejected. Veal has but
sixteen parts of nitrogenous matter to sixty-three of water, and the bones
contain much more gelatine than is found in older animals. But in all
bones much useful carbon and nitrogen is found; three pounds of bone
yielding as much carbon, and six pounds as much nitrogen, as one pound of
meat. Carefully boiled, this nutriment can all be extracted, and flavored
with vegetables, form the basis of an endless variety of soups.
PORK is of all meats the most difficult to digest, containing as it does
so large a proportion of fat. In a hundred parts of the meat, only nine of
nitrogen are found, fat being forty-eight and water thirty-nine, with but
two of salty matters. Bacon properly cured is much more digestible than
pork, the smoke giving it certain qualities not existing in uncured pork.
No food has yet been found which can take its place for army and navy use
or in pioneering. Beef when salted or smoked loses much of its virtue,
and eight ounces of fat pork will give nearly three times as much carbon
or heat-food as the same amount of beef; but its use is chiefly for the
laborer, and it should have only occasional place in the dietary of
sedentary persons.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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