Among the variety of schemes that have been suggested for bettering the condition of the poor, a more useful or extensive charity cannot be devised, than that of instructing them in economical and comfortable cookery, except providing them with spectacles.
“The poor in Scotland, and on the Continent, manage much better. Oatmeal porridge (Nos. [205] and [572]) and milk, constitute the breakfast and supper of those patterns of industry, frugality, and temperance, the Scottish peasantry.
“When they can afford meat, they form with it a large quantity of barley broth ([No. 204]), with a variety of vegetables, by boiling the whole a long time, enough to serve the family for several days.
“When they cannot afford meat, they make broth of barley and other vegetables, with a lump of butter (see [No. 229]), all of which they boil for many hours, and this with oat cakes forms their dinner.” Cochrane’s Seaman’s Guide, p. 34.
The cheapest method of making a nourishing soup is least known to those who have most need of it. (See [No. 229].)
Our neighbours the French are so justly famous for their skill in the affairs of the kitchen, that the adage says, “as many Frenchmen as many cooks:” surrounded as they are by a profusion of the most delicious wines and most seducing liqueurs, offering every temptation and facility to render drunkenness delightful: yet a tippling Frenchman is a “rara avis;” they know how so easily and completely to keep life in repair by good eating, that they require little or no adjustment from drinking.
This accounts for that “toujours gai,” and happy equilibrium of spirits, which they enjoy with more regularity than any people. Their stomach, being unimpaired by spirituous liquors, embrace and digest vigorously the food they sagaciously prepare for it, and render easily assimilable by cooking it sufficiently, wisely contriving to get the difficult part of the work of the stomach done by fire and water.
To salt Meat.—(No. 6.)
In the summer season, especially, meat is frequently spoiled by the cook forgetting to take out the kernels; one in the udder of a round of beef, in the fat in the middle of the round, those about the thick end of the flank, &c.: if these are not taken out, all the salt in the world will not keep the meat.
The art of salting meat is to rub in the salt thoroughly and evenly into every part, and to fill all the holes full of salt where the kernels were taken out, and where the butcher’s skewers were.