The value of corn-meal for invalids who are thin and incapable of maintaining their natural warmth is scarcely appreciated. Indian-corn contains a large percentage of oil, which is nourishing and fattening. Fat is the heat-producing power.
As to the meats, it seems to me a mistake that that from the ox, with his wholesome food, cleanly habits, sweet breath, and clear eye, is not the most wholesome and digestible of aliments. No meat is so tender and juicy as the cut from the tenderloin or the porter-house steak.
Pork should be avoided in every form by invalids.
I can not but believe that rare-cooked, tender beef is the most valuable dish in the culinary répertoire for invalids; yet Dr. Beaumont, after experimenting with St. Martin, ranks venison, when tender and in season, as the most digestible and assimilable of meats. He classes mutton second; then beef. Lamb is less digestible than mutton. Veal should be avoided as well as pork. Fatty substances are also difficult of assimilation. Poultry is less digestible than beef. Then, again, the manner of cooking beef has a great influence on its digestibility. The best modes are broiling and roasting. Potatoes roasted or baked are digested an hour sooner than potatoes boiled.
Before beginning the receipts for especial dishes, I will copy a little story, which furnishes an illustration that the simplest modes of cooking are, after all, the most satisfactory.
“The Vicomte de Vaudreuil, when appointed chargé d’affaires of France to the Court of St. James’s, brought over with him a young cook, an élève of the highest schools of the cuisines of Paris. This young culinary aspirant to fame, shortly after his arrival in London, obtained permission of his master to go and witness the artistic operations of that established cordon-bleu, Monsieur Mingay, the cook to Prince Esterhazy, who had been brought up under the Prince Talleyrand’s famous chef, Louis, and previously under that most bleu of all cordons, the great Carême. On the élève’s return, the Vicomte, hearing that his cook was in a state of astonishment from something he had witnessed in Prince Esterhazy’s kitchen, summoned him to his presence, and said, ‘What is this culinary miracle, which I have heard astonishes you, and casts into the shade all other triumphs of the art?’ Vatel’s follower replied, ‘Oh, Monsieur le Vicomte, when I entered the cuisine at Chandos House it was near the time of the prince’s luncheon, for which his excellency had ordered something which should be very simple and easily digestible, as he was suffering from languor. The chef, Mingay, accordingly cut from under a well-hung rump of beef three slices of fillet, and rapidly broiling them, he placed the choicest-looking in the middle of a hot dish, and afterward pressing the juice completely out of the remaining two, he poured it on the first! Oh, monsieur, how great the prince! how great the cook!’”
RECEIPTS FOR THE SICK-ROOM.
Tea.
Tea is best, made fresh in the sick-room. A little tête-à-tête china service is a pretty ornament for a bedroom, and it is a convenient and tasteful arrangement for serving tea to invalids. If one has no little tea-pot like that belonging to the service here referred to, a small one of any other kind is desirable.
Put two tea-spoonfuls of tea-leaves into the small tea-pot; pour two tea-cupfuls of boiling water over it; cover it closely, and let it steam for a few moments.