The Chemistry of Cookery

by W. Mattieu Williams

Reverting to what I have already said concerning the action of heat on the constituents of flesh, it is evident that in the first place the long exposure to the boiling point must harden the albumen. Syntonin, or muscle-fibrin, the material of the ultimate contractile fibres of the muscle, is coagulated by boiling water, and further hardened by continuous boiling, in the same manner as albumen. Thus the muscle-fibres themselves, and the lubricating liquor[10] in which they are imbedded, must be simultaneously toughened by the method above described, and this explains the pertinacious fibrosity of the result.

But how is the apparent tenderness, the facile separation of the fibres of the same meat produced? A little further examination of the anatomy and chemistry of muscle will, I think, explain this quite satisfactorily. The ultimate fibres of the muscles are enveloped in a very delicate membrane; a bundle of these is again enveloped in a somewhat stronger membrane (areolar tissue); and a number of these bundles of fasciculi are further enveloped in a proportionally stronger sheath of similar membrane. All these binding membranes are mainly composed of gelatin, or the substance which produces gelatin when boiled. The boiling that is necessary to drive out all the air from the tins is sufficient to dissolve this, and effect that easy separability of the muscular fibres, or fasciculi of fibres, that gives to such overcooked meat its fictitious tenderness.

I am, however, doubtful whether all the gelatin of these membranes is thus dissolved. The jelly existing in the tins shows that some is dissolved and hydrated, if my theory of the cookery is right; but there does not appear to be as much of this jelly as would be formed by the stewing of a corresponding quantity of meat at a lower temperature. Some of the membranous gelatin is, I suspect, dehydrated when the highest temperature of the process is attained—i.e. when the concentration of the juices raises the boiling point of their solution considerably above that of pure water. This, if I am right, would check further solution of the membrane, would hydrate and harden the remainder, and thus contribute to the hardening of the fibre above described.

I have entered into these anatomical and chemical details because it is only by understanding them that the difference between true tenderness and spurious tenderness of stewed meat can be soundly understood, especially in this country, where stewed meats are despised because scientific stewing is practically and generally an unknown art. Ask an English cook the difference between boiled beef or mutton and stewed beef or mutton, and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred her reply will be to the effect that stewed meat is that which has been boiled or simmered for a longer time than the boiled meat.

She proceeds, in accordance with this definition, when making an Irish stew or similar dish, by ‘simmering’ at 212° until, by the coagulation and hardening of the albumen and syntonin, a leathery mass is obtained; then she continues the simmering until the gelatin of the areolar tissue is partially dissolved, and the toughened fibres separate or become readily separable. Having achieved this disintegration, she supposes the meat to be tender, the fact being that the fibres individually are tougher than they were at the leathery stage. The mischief is not limited to the destruction of the flavour of the meat, but includes the destruction of the nutritive value of its solid portion by rendering it all indigestible, with the exception of the gelatin, which is dissolved in the gravy.

This exception should be duly noted, inasmuch as it is the one redeeming feature of such proceeding that renders it fairly well adapted for the cookery of such meat as cow-heels, sheeps’-trotters, calves’-heads, shins of beef, knuckles of veal, and other viands which consist mainly of membranous, tendinous, or integumentary matter composed of gelatin. To treat the prime parts of good beef or mutton in this manner is to perpetrate a domestic atrocity.

I may here mention an experiment that I have made lately. I killed a superannuated hen—more than six years old, but otherwise in very good condition. Cooked in the ordinary way she would have been uneatably tough. Instead of being thus cooked, she was gently stewed about four hours. I cannot guarantee to the maintenance of the theoretical temperature, having suspicion of some simmering. After this she was left in the water until it cooled, and on the following day was roasted in the usual manner—i.e. in a roasting oven. The result was excellent; as tender as a full-grown chicken roasted in the ordinary way, and of quite equal flavour, in spite of the very good broth obtained by the preliminary stewing. This surprised me. I anticipated the softening of the tendons and ligaments, but supposed that the extraction of the juices would have spoiled the flavour. It must have diluted it, and that so much remained was probably due to the fact that an old fowl is more fully flavoured than a young chicken. The usual farmhouse method of cooking old hens is to stew them simply, the rule in the Midlands being one hour in the pot for every year of age. The feature of the above experiment was the supplementary roasting. As the laying season comes to an end, old hens become a drug in the market; and those among my readers who have not a hen-roost of their own will much oblige their poulterers by ordering a hen that is warranted to be four years old or upwards. If he deals fairly he will supply a specimen upon which they may repeat my experiment very cheaply. It offers the double economy of utilising a nearly waste product, and obtaining chicken-broth and roast fowl simultaneously.

Another experiment on the cooking of old hens was recently made by a neighbour at my suggestion, and proved very successful. The bird was cut up and gently stewed in fat like the small joints of my experiments described in [p. 57].

I have not yet repeated this experiment, but when I do shall use bacon liquor (the surplus fat from grilled bacon) for the bath, and hope thereby to obtain an approach to the effect of ‘larding,’ as practised in luxurious cookery.

One of the great advantages of stewing is that it affords a means of obtaining a savoury and very wholesome dish at a minimum of cost. A small piece of meat may be stewed with a large quantity of vegetables, the juice of the meat savouring the whole. Besides this, it costs far less fuel than roasting.