A Course of Lectures on the Principles of Domestic Economy and Cookery. Juliet Corson

a piece of meat or a bird of any kind that was really dirty enough to need washing. If it had anything on it that I could not get off by wiping with a wet cloth, I simply wouldn’t use it. If you wash meat or poultry you destroy a certain amount of its flavoring and take away some of its nourishment.

      Question. Sometimes a bird shot will have a great deal of the blood settle in the breast or in the flesh.

      Miss Corson. Yes; you want the blood; you want to keep the blood there. The blood is a part of the nourishment. The idea of washing meat comes from the old Hebrew prohibition which involved the removal of every particle of blood. You know that the Hebrews believed that the blood was the life and even to this day every particle of blood is taken away from their meat, not only by washing after it comes into the house, but before that by the treatment it receives from the butcher. The blood is a part of the nourishment, and you want to keep as much of it as you can; in some cooking it forms a very important part; for instance, in cooking a hare or rabbit, the blood which escapes in the dressing is saved and used.

      Question. Would you treat prairie chicken, grouse or partridge in this way?

      Miss Corson. Yes, in the same way.

      Question. Not if you were going to roast turkey?

      Miss Corson. One of my good friends in the far Northwest several years ago sent me a nice recipe for making a fricassee of chicken which I will tell you. The recipe said that after the chicken was picked you might wash it thoroughly with nice soap, then rinse it. (Laughter.) Now if you like you can prepare it that way. No, you will find, ladies, that if you use a cloth well wet in cold water you can remove all objectionable matter from the outside of meat or poultry. Indeed, if a piece of meat or poultry can not be cleaned with a wet cloth, it is not clean enough to use. One lady asks me about keeping meat for a long time. Of course that is a question of taste entirely, whether you like meat hung a long time or whether you like it fresh. All meat, when it is first killed, whether it is poultry, or game, or the ordinary domestic meat, is very tender. It is tender until the flesh begins to grow cold, until the animal heat, etc., parts from the flesh. Then it becomes tough, rigid and hard, and remains so until the process of decomposition begins. I do not mean until it begins to taint, but until it begins to decompose; at that point it begins to grow tender; it is still fresh and good enough for food. Remember that the hanging of meat is for the purpose of allowing it to begin to decompose.

LECTURE SECOND.

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      Our lesson this afternoon will consist of some plain soups and stews of meat. I shall begin with a soup—of yellow split peas. For four quarts of soup use an ordinary cupful of yellow split peas; pick them over and wash them in cold water, put them in a saucepan or a soup kettle with two quarts of cold water. Set the saucepan or soup kettle over the fire and let the water very gradually heat. When it boils put in some cold water—part of a cupful, let them boil again; keep on putting in cold water every fifteen or twenty minutes, until you have used two quarts of cold water besides the first two quarts. The object of adding cold water slowly is this: You soften the peas by the gradual heating of the cold water. After the first boiling the addition of a little cold water lowers the temperature, and as the water heats again the peas are gradually softening; so that within an hour and a half or two hours you will find them quite tender enough. You will notice that I have used no salt; the salt would tend to harden the peas. You add salt after the soup is nearly finished. The old way of soaking the peas over night is a very good one, but this is rather better, for this reason: If you soak the peas over night you destroy a small portion of their nutritive properties; especially if you make the soup in warm water, there will be a slight fermentation. The object of soaking them over night is simply to soften them, and as you can soften them in this way you accomplish the same purpose by adding cold water gradually. You will notice that this is for perfectly plain pea soup. You can vary it by adding bones of cold ham, or of cold roast beef; you can boil the bones with the peas. In that way you get the flavor of whatever meat you add. A very nice soup is made simply with the peas without any meat, by the addition of a fried onion, for that soup you would peel and slice an onion and put it in the bottom of the soup kettle with a tablespoonful of butter or drippings—beef drippings or poultry drippings—and fry it light brown; then put on the peas and cold water and proceed just as we do to-day for a plain pea soup, without any addition except a seasoning of salt and pepper, and by and by a little flour and butter, which I shall put in at the close, the object of which I will explain to you then.

BEEF AND VEGETABLE SOUP.

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      For four quarts of soup use one cupful each of the ingredients which I shall name: lean beef cut in half-inch pieces; carrot, which must first be scraped and then cut in half-inch bits; turnip, which must be peeled and then cut in small pieces; rice, picked over, washed in cold water; tomatoes, peeled and sliced if they are fresh; but if you use canned tomatoes simply cut them in small pieces; half a cupful of onion, peeled and chopped rather fine; and four quarts of cold water. First put the water over the fire with the beef in it, and let it gradually heat; while it is heating get ready all the other ingredients that I have spoken of, and add them when the water is hot. Don’t add salt for seasoning until after the soup has been cooking for a little while, because it would tend to harden the meat. When the soup is boiling, put in all the other ingredients; and after the soup has cooked for an hour, season it with salt and pepper. Cook it slowly for about two hours, or until the vegetables are tender. The length of time will depend somewhat on the season of the year. You will find that carrots and turnips, like all vegetables which have woody fibre in them, will cook more quickly early in the winter while they still have their natural moisture in them. The later in the winter it grows the drier they get, the harder the woody fibre is, and the longer it will take to cook them tender. So you will cook the soup until the vegetables are tender; and then, having seen that it is palatably seasoned, serve it with all the vegetables in it. You notice that this is a thick soup, made in an entirely different way from that which I made this morning. I think some of the ladies are here who were here this morning. Then we were making clear soup which is to be served without any vegetables in it. This is a good hearty soup for every-day use; in fact it is so hearty that you can make the bulk of a meal using this and bread or potatoes. When all the vegetables are quite tender then the soup simply is to be served.

      Now, while I am preparing the soup, I want to say a little about the value of soup as a food. This comes properly into our afternoon course of instruction. Many of the ladies may not have thought of it in precisely the connection in which I am going to speak of it. Habitually, Americans do not use soup. Some have grown gradually accustomed to have soup as a part of their every-day dinner, but as a rule people have it once or twice a week. I am speaking now of average families. As a matter of fact, it ought to be used every day, because it is not only a very easy form in which to obtain nourishment, but you obtain from soup that which you would not get from any other dish; that is, you get every particle of the nourishment there is in the ingredients which you put into the soup. You can make a perfectly nutritious and palatable meal with soup at about one-half the cost of a meal without soup, because the soup, if it is savory, will be eaten with a relish; and it will satisfy the appetite for two reasons; the first I have already spoken of—because you get every particle of nourishment there is in the ingredients; and second, because directly you eat it—that is, directly it reaches the stomach, some of its nutritious liquid properties will begin to be absorbed at once. They pass directly into the system, by the process which is known in physiology as osmosis—that is, absorption by the coats of the stomach; so that the liquid part of the food is actually absorbed and passes into the circulation in less than five minutes after you have eaten it. A very familiar illustration of that fact was made by Sir Henry Thompson several years ago, in his exceedingly valuable article called “Food and Feeding,” where he said that a hungry man eating clear soup for his dinner would feel a sense of refreshment in less than three minutes; that is, he would feel the effect of his plate of