Treacle Posset.—Heat ½ pint milk in the saucepan, and when in the act of boiling, pour in 1 gill (¼ pint) treacle. The milk instantly curdles. It must be taken off the spirit lamp and allowed to stand for 10 minutes, and then strained through a piece of muslin to separate the curds. This must be drunk hot. White wine, whey, and lemon whey, are prepared in a similar manner, only substituting a glass of sherry in one case, and a glass of lemon juice in the other, for the treacle. All wheys must be strained before they are taken.
Restorative Soup.—Take 1 lb. newly-killed beef or fowl, mince it very fine, add 8 fl. oz. soft or distilled water, 4-6 drops pure hydrochloric acid, 30-60 gr. common salt, and stir well together. After 3 hours the whole is to be thrown on a common hair sieve, and the fluid allowed to pass through with slight pressure. On the flesh residue in the sieve pour slowly 2 oz. distilled water, and let it run through while squeezing the meat; there will be 10 oz. extract of meat, of which a wineglassful may be taken at pleasure. It must not be warmed to a greater extent than putting a bottle filled partially with it to stand in hot water. If the flavour be disagreeable, 1 wineglassful claret may be added to 1 teacupful.
Milk Toast.—Take 2 slices bread and toast well—that is, crisp. Take new milk or cream, also a bit of butter (varying according to toast required), and melt in a saucepan together. Then dip in the slices of toast, let them soak for a moment or two, lift on to a deep plate, and pour the remains of milk and butter on top. Serve very hot; add salt as required.
Hot Milk.—Milk that is heated to much above 100° F. loses, for a time, a degree of its sweetness and density; but no one fatigued by over-exertion of body or mind who has ever experienced the reviving influence of a tumbler of this beverage as hot as it can be sipped, will willingly forego a resort to it because of its having been rendered somewhat less acceptable to the palate. The promptness with which its cordial influence is felt is indeed surprising. Some portions seem to be digested and appropriated almost immediately; and many who fancy that they need alcoholic stimulants when exhausted by labour of brain or body will find in this simple draught an equivalent that will be as abundantly satisfying and more enduring in its effects.
Caudles.—The basis of all caudles is flour gruel, made either with water or milk, that made with milk being the most nutritious, while both are equally digestible. In cool weather a quantity of gruel may be made and kept in a cool place, and portions of it heated and used as required. When gruel enters largely into the diet, its acceptability to the patient will be augmented by varying the flavouring or spice used in its preparation. If, therefore, a quantity is made plain, it can be sweetened and variously flavoured as it is heated for immediate use.
Cold Wine Caudle (a nutritious, digestible, and slightly stimulating food, useful in all sickness where starch and wine are not objectionable).—Make a good gruel by mixing smoothly 1 tablespoonful flour with ½ pint cold milk or water, and stirring it into ½ pint boiling milk or water; add a level teaspoonful of salt, and let the gruel boil for 5 minutes, stirring it to prevent burning. To ½ pint cold gruel add 1 egg beaten to a froth, 1 glass of good wine, and sugar and nutmeg to suit the palate of the patient.
Hot Wine Caudle (preferably to cold caudle generally, and useful in the same physical condition indicated in the preceding recipe). Heat ½ pint gruel; beat the yolk of a raw egg to a cream with 2 tablespoonfuls pulverised sugar; beat the white of the egg to a stiff froth; when the gruel is boiling hot, quickly beat a glass of good sherry or Madeira wine into the egg yolk and sugar, stir the hot gruel into it, and then add the beaten white of the egg. Work very quickly, and serve the caudle hot.
Cream Caudle (an equally valuable food with the two preceding caudles, useful under similar physical conditions). To 1 pint gruel add 1 glass good wine, 1 gill sweet cream, 1 tablespoonful noyeau or any good cordial, and sugar to suit the patient’s taste. Use hot or cold, but preferably hot.
Digestive Foods.—Where the digestion is weak, as is generally the case in sickness, much benefit may be derived from partially digested foods. Maltose is a sugar which does not readily undergo acetous fermentation, and therefore will not give rise to acidity and dyspepsia. This is a great matter, as cane sugar added to stewed fruit and milk puddings readily undergoes acetous fermentation in many stomachs. The lævulose sugar of fruit, like maltose, readily undergoes alcoholic but not acetous fermentation. Maltose being less powerfully sweet than cane sugar, a greater quantity is necessary to sweeten the pudding. If the raw starch, semolina, sago, or tapioca be first put in the dish by itself, and placed in the oven for an hour (taking care not to have it burnt by the oven being too hot), not only are the starch cells cracked, but a certain conversion of the starch into dextrine takes place. If to this be then added an equal quantity of ground malt and some hot milk poured on, and the dish be allowed to stand a few minutes before being put into the oven again, the diastase of the malt acts upon the farina and converts it into dextrine and maltose. Dextrine and maltose being soluble, the pudding is very thin. Such a pudding is admirably adapted for invalids and dyspeptics, as requiring scarcely any digestion in the body. For those with whom ordinary milk puddings produce acidity, such a pudding is specially suitable. Ground malt may be added to fresh milk, and forms an admirable food in cases of acute disease. Baked flour perhaps goes better with meat broths, to which it gives a high food value. (Well-baked flour requires but a touch of saliva to render it soluble, and, added to meat broths and gravy soups, renders them very nutritive.) Malt, being sweet, goes better with milk, or apple-water, or tamarind-water, or lemonade, and gives us a food which being all but independent of the digestive act, can be most usefully employed in the sickroom. Beef-tea (which alone is scarcely a food) and milk-and-seltzerwater pall upon the palate of the sick person, who craves variety just as do healthy persons. The adoption of ground malt as a food will solve for us one or two knotty questions connected with feeding people when the digestive power is feeble. Drinks like lemonade, made with malt instead of cane sugar, would not only not go sour in the mouth and stomach, but would contain some phosphates and soluble albuminoids, and so form admirable beverages in feverish states. The many malt extracts now in the market are well adapted for such end. (Lancet.)
An excellent peptonising apparatus, for the predigestion of foods for the sickroom, is sold by Savory and Moore.