FOOD FOR INVALIDS
IT may not be out of place to give a few well-tried recipes for the benefit of invalids.
Beef-tea.—Procure beef which has been freshly killed. Take one pound of beef free from the least particle of fat, gristle, sinew, or skin. Mince it with a knife, not with a machine. Put the beef into one pint of cold water, and stir for ten minutes. Bring it to the boil, and boil it for half an hour, never ceasing to stir it. Strain, and add a dust of salt only. Serve with strips of dry toast, and salt in a salt-cellar.
Cold Beef-tea.—This can be digested by persons who cannot take the usual beef-tea. Mince one pound of raw beef as finely as possible. Pour upon it one quart of boiling water. Plunge the jar in a deep saucepan ready filled with boiling water. Set it near the fire, but not so close as to make it simmer. Draw the saucepan gradually away from the fire, and let the beef-tea get nearly cold. Then strain it through muslin, and after that filter it through clean white blotting-paper. Serve cold.
Chicken Broth.—Roast a chicken for fifteen minutes, not longer. Cut it into slices, and put it into a saucepan with three pints of cold water. Season very lightly with pepper and salt. Bring it gradually to the boil, and let it simmer very gently. An old fowl will take from four to six hours, a young one will need three hours. Strain, and take off every particle of fat. The previous roasting of the chicken is a great improvement. If the broth is liked thick, simmer in it two ounces of crushed tapioca or sago.
Nourishing Broth.—Make the chicken broth as in the foregoing recipe, but when the chicken is put into the saucepan to simmer, add to it two pounds of fresh shin of beef, without fat, and cook the chicken and beef together. Or, if the chicken cannot be had, use a knuckle of veal. Put the beef and veal into five quarts of cold water. Add a little salt, bring the broth to the boil, and simmer slowly. The beef and veal must be simmered in five quarts of water till this is gradually reduced to three pints of broth. Strain, and remove any fat.
Chicken Food for an Invalid.—Take a good chicken and remove all the white meat. Cut up the remainder into small pieces, and stew it in a quart of water till it is reduced one-third. Let it cool. Then remove every particle of fat or grease. Put in the white meat of the chicken, and simmer gently for fifteen minutes. Then pound it to a paste in a mortar. Return the pounded meat to the broth, and again simmer as gently as possible for fifteen minutes more. Season with just a dust of pepper and salt, and serve cold in a small mould.