CHAPTER XXXII.
FOREIGN AND JEWISH COOKERY.
We had hoped to have been able without exceeding the prescribed limits of the present volume to have added here a somewhat extensive chapter on the cookery of other countries, and to have comprised in it a section adapted to the service of the Jewish table; but we have so much enlarged in the pages on the more important subject of “Bread,” and on other matters which relate to simple English domestic economy, that we find it necessary to depart from our original intention, and to confine our receipts here to a comparatively small number. This, however, is of the less consequence as so many good and well tested foreign receipts, of which, from our own experience, we can guarantee the success, are to be found in the body of the work.
REMARKS ON JEWISH COOKERY.
From being forbidden by their usages to mingle butter, or other preparation of milk or cream with meat at any meal, the Jews have oil much used in their cookery of fish, meat, and vegetables. Pounded almonds and rich syrups of sugar and water agreeably flavoured, assist in compounding their sweet dishes, many of which are excellent, and preserve much of their oriental character; but we are credibly informed that the restrictions of which we have spoken are not at the present day very rigidly observed by the main body of Jews in this country, though they are so by those who are denominated strict.
JEWISH SMOKED BEEF.[[188]]
[188]. We were made acquainted with it first through the courtesy of a Jewish lady, who afterwards supplied us with the address of the butcher from whom it was procured: Mr. Pass, 34, Duke Street, Aldgate, from whom the chorissa also may be purchased, and probably many other varieties of smoked meat which are used in Jewish cookery. For such of our readers as may not be acquainted with the fact, it may be well to state here that all meat supplied by Jew butchers is sure to be of first-rate quality, as they are forbidden by the Mosaic Law to convert into food any animal which is not perfectly free from all “spot or blemish.”
This is excellent, possessing the fine flavour of a really well cured ham, and retaining it unimpaired for a very long time after it is cut or cooked, if kept in a cool larder; it is therefore a valuable and inexpensive store for imparting savour to soups, gravies, and other preparations; and it affords also a dish of high relish for the table. An inch or two of the lean part, quite cleared from the smoked edges and divided into dice, will flavour well a tureen of gravy, or a pint of soup: even that which has been boiled will greatly improve the flavour of Liebig’s extract of beef, and of any simple broth or consommé. From the depth of fat upon it, which appears particularly rich and mellow, we think it is the thick flank of the beef of which we have made trial in various ways, and which is now in much request in several families of our acquaintance, who find it greatly superior to the common hung or Dutch beef, to which they were previously accustomed.