When you are feeding an invalid, a time in convalescence arrives when the patient wants the nourishment of meat, but cannot digest so solid a substance as beef or mutton. Then you can give her the following broth—
Take half a pound of the best rump steak, and having shredded it up finely, boil it in a pint of water for four hours, and then press the whole through a sieve. If necessary or desirable, vegetables may be added, or chicken may be used in place of beef. The great point to remember in making this is to press everything through the sieve. This forms the most nourishing of all liquids; yet it is not liquid nourishment, for the nutritive portion exists in the solid particles which float about in the liquid.
The fish course is usually a very digestible one. On the whole, boiled fish is more digestible than fried fish, and may be given to invalids earlier in convalescence. Boiled sole is the most readily digested of all fish, but with the exception of herrings, mackerel, salmon, eel, and some other fresh-water fish, all fish is good wholesome food. The fish mentioned as being indigestible must never be given to anybody whose stomach is in any way delicate or readily upset.
Excepting oysters, all shellfish are indigestible. Mussels have always had an unfair amount of abuse. It is true that they cause more deaths than any other kind of shellfish, but then they are eaten in much larger quantities. No shellfish should ever be eaten raw, for they all feed on carrion and filth of very description, and so may contain large numbers of very virulent germs.
It is well to remember that fish is meat diet. People make absurd mistakes about this, and look upon fish as part of a milk diet. Fish has essentially the same composition as butcher’s meat, but it contains more water and fewer extractives.
It is well known to everybody that the medical profession has for ages urged upon the public the dangers of excessive flesh-eating, yet has it never clearly stated why eating too much meat is so far more injurious than eating too much bread or vegetables. But the explanation is really very simple.
Meat is more readily soluble and digestible than farinaceous foods. If you fill your stomach with meat, all of it will be digested; practically the whole of it will get into the blood, and there being in excess of what is needed, it gives the various organs of the body great trouble to get rid of it.
On the other hand, if you take a big meal of cabbage, only a very small proportion of it is digestible, and so very little will get into the blood. After eating excess of vegetables or farinaceous food you will probably be sick, and there is an end of the matter.
But besides nourishment, meat contains a large quantity of extractives—substances which are waste products of vital action; which are practically animal poisons, and which enter the blood without requiring digestion, but which are useless to the animal economy, and have to be got rid of at once.
It is to extractives that meats owe their flavour, and the more tasty and succulent your dishes are, the greater is the amount of extractives that they contain.