The Chemistry of Cookery

by W. Mattieu Williams

The preparation of sugar caramel is easy enough; the sugar should be gradually heated till it assumes a rich brown colour and has lost its original sweetness. If carried just far enough, the result is easily soluble in hot water, and the solution may be kept for a long time, as it is by cooks who understand its merits. In connection with the idea of its disinfecting action, I may refer to the cookery of tainted meat or ‘high’ game. A hare that is repulsively advanced when raw may, by much roasting and browning, become quite wholesome; and such is commonly the case in the ordinary cooking of hares. If it were boiled or merely stewed (without preliminary browning) in this condition, it would be quite disgusting to ordinary palates.

A leg of mutton for roasting should be hung until it begins to become odorous; for boiling it should be as fresh as possible. This should be especially remembered now that we have so much frozen meat imported from the antipodes. When duly thawed it is in splendid condition for roasting, but is not usually so satisfactory when boiled. I may here mention incidentally that such meat is sometimes unjustly condemned on account of its displaying a raw centre when cooked. This arises from imperfect thawing. The heat required to thaw a given weight of ice and bring it up to 60° is about the same as is demanded for the cookery of an equal quantity of meat, and therefore, while the thawed portion of the meat is being cooked, the frozen portion is but just thawed, and remains quite raw.

A much longer time is demanded for thawing—i.e. supplying 142° of latent heat—than might be supposed. To ascertain whether the thawing is completed, drive an iron skewer through the thickest part of the joint. If there is a core of ice within it will be distinctly felt by its resistance.

A correspondent asks me which is the most nutritious—a slice of English beef in its own gravy or the browned morsel as served in an Italian restaurant with the caramel addition to the gravy?

This is a very fair question, and not difficult to answer. If both are equally cooked, neither overdone nor underdone, they must contain, weight for weight, exactly the same constituents in equally digestible form, so far as chemical composition is concerned. Whether they will actually be digested with equal facility and assimilated with equal completeness depends upon something else not measurable by chemical analysis, viz. the relish with which they are respectively eaten. To some persons the undisguised fleshiness of the English slice, especially if underdone, is very repugnant. To these the corresponding morsel, cooked according to Gouffé rather than Mrs. Beeton, would be more nutritious. To the carnivorous John Bull, who regards such dishes as ‘nasty French messes’ of questionable composition, the slice of unmistakable ox-flesh, from a visible joint, would obtain all the advantages of appreciative mastication, and that sympathy between the brain and the stomach which is so powerful that, when discordantly exerted, it may produce the effects that are recorded in the case of the sporting traveller who was invited by a Red Indian chief to a ‘dog-fight,’ and ate with relish the savoury dishes at what he supposed to be a preliminary banquet. Digestion was tranquilly and healthfully proceeding, under the soothing influence of the calumet, when he asked the chief when the fight would commence. On being told that it was over, and that, in the final ragoût he had praised so highly, the last puppy-dog possessed by the tribe had been cooked in his honour, the normal course of digestion of the honoured guest was completely reversed.

Before leaving the subject of caramel, I should say a few words about French coffee, or ‘Coffee as in France,’ of which we hear so much. There are two secrets upon which depend the excellence of our neighbours in the production of this beverage. First, economy in using the water; second, flavouring with caramel. As regards the first, it appears that English housewives have been demoralised by the habitual use of tea, and apply to the infusion of coffee the popular formula for that of tea, ‘a spoonful for each person and one for the pot.’

The French after-dinner coffee-cup has about one-third of the liquid capacity of a full-sized English breakfast-cup, but the quantity of solid coffee supplied to each cupful is more than equal to that ordinarily allowed for the larger English measure of water.

Besides this, the coffee is commonly, though not universally, flavoured with a specially and skilfully-prepared caramel, instead of the chicory so largely used in England. Much of the so-called ‘French coffee’ now sold by our grocers in tins is caramel flavoured with coffee rather than coffee flavoured with caramel, and many shrewd English housewives have discovered that by mixing the cheapest of these French coffees with an equal quantity of pure coffee they obtain a better result than with the common domestic mixture of three parts coffee and one of chicory.

A few months ago a sample of ‘coffee-finings’ was sent to me for chemical examination, that I might certify to its composition and wholesomeness. I described it in my report as ‘a caramel, with a peculiarly rich aroma and flavour, evidently due to the vegetable juices or extractive matter naturally united with the saccharine substance from which it is prepared.’ I had no definite information of the exact nature of this saccharine substance, but have since learned that it was a bye-product of sugar refining.

Neither the juice of the beetroot nor the sap of the sugar-cane consists entirely of pure sugar dissolved in pure water. They both contain other constituents common to vegetable juices, and some peculiar to themselves. These mucilaginous matters, when roughly separated, carry down with them some sugar, and form a sort of coarse sweetwort, capable by skilful treatment of producing a rich caramel well suited for mixing with coffee.