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Tlic Country Gcntlcivoman 



with oil. If opportunity permits, they 

 sprinkle them with lemon juice before they 

 are oiled and made up into a roll. The 

 flavour of roasted meat and its grateful 

 effect on the sense of smell must have 

 been recognised in very early times, for 

 burnt-offerings are frequently spoken of by 

 Moses as a "sweet savour unto the Lord," 

 and particular accounts are given of the 

 manner in which these offerings of the 

 lamb and the kid, &c., were to be made 

 acceptable, not merely to the Lord, but also 

 to Aaron and his sons, who were to eat 

 of them. How far back in history the 

 flavour of roast-pig was eulogised I know not, 

 but it is immortalised in the essay of Charles 

 Lamb. As for the process of baking meat, 

 it is not nearly so refined as that of roast- 

 ing, although it has one advantage, in the 

 circumstance that the temperature can be 

 more easily regulated than with roasting. 



PREPARATION OF SOUP. 



In making sotip the object is to extract, as 

 completely as possible, all the soluble consti- 

 tuents of the meat or bone, and when the 

 latter is used it should be chopped or 

 broken into small pieces, and boiled for a 

 considerable time — not less than nine or 

 ten hours. Shin-bones will then yield about 

 19 per cent, of their weight of fat and 

 gelatine — the soup being, according to Dr 

 E. Smith, very nutritious, so that 6 lb. of 

 bones will produce a soup that contains 

 the nutritive power of 2 lb. of meat, as 

 far as carbon is concerned, and of i lb. of 

 meat in respect of nitrogen ; but although 

 this may be so as regards the actual quanti- 

 ties of carbonaceous and nitrogenous matters 

 present, yet it is very doubtful whether they 

 are equally nutritious, for in the renowned 

 experiments of the French gelatine commis- 

 sion it was found that the soup or jelly from 

 boiled bones would not support the life of 

 dogs, although raw bones, in like i)roportion, 

 would. 



Ox-tail soup is much richer than that from 

 bones alone, as it contains the saline and 

 other constituents of flesh. It is now a fa- 

 vourite and rather expensive soup, although at 



one time it was the humble fare, and almost 

 the only nitrogenous food of the poor Protes- 

 tant French refugees of Clerkenwell. Prior 

 to the year 1679, or thereabout, the butchers 

 of London left the tails attached to the hides, 

 which were sent to the tanners of Bermondsey, 

 but the poor French refugees, in their ex- 

 tremity of want, bought the tails for a mere 

 trifle, and converted them into soup, which 

 was soon found to be of excellent quality. 



Soup made from meat should be obtained 

 in the way already described — that is, a given 

 weight of meat, chopped fine should be 

 allowed to macerate in its own weight of cold 

 water, and should then be gradually heated 

 to the boiHng-point, after which it should be 

 strained and pressed. In this way about 3 

 per cent, of the nutritious matter of the meat 

 is dissolved, besides the saline constituents. 

 If the soup is simmered with the meat for 

 some hours, a larger proportion of organic 

 matter, chiefly gelatine, will be dissolved ; 

 and a good soup thus made from shin of beef 

 will contain about 600 grains of solid matter 

 in a pint, and of this about 39 grains are 

 saline. 



"extractum carnis" of liebk;. 

 Lean meat contains about 25 per cent, of 

 solid matter, the rest being water, and of this 

 from 7 to 10 parts are soluble in cold water; 

 rather more than half of this is albumen and 

 miochrome (colouring matter), which are 

 coagulated by heat, and thus, if the cold solu- 

 tion of flesh be boiled, it contains only from 

 3 to 4 per cent, of the meat ; and when eva- 

 porated to dryness it constitutes the extractum 

 carnis of Liebig. It can hardly be said, how- 

 ever, that the nutritive power of this extract 

 is very great, for its chief constituents are 

 certain acids, lactic and inosic, with enosite, 

 creatine, creaiitiine, and an indefinite colloidal 

 organic substance of a brown colour and 

 syrupy consistence ; besides which it contains 

 the soluble saline matters of the meat, as 

 phosphate and chloride of potassium, with a 

 little chloride of sodium. Analyses of this 

 extract, as found in commerce, have furnished 

 from 41 to 60 per cent, of water, from 22 to 

 41 per cent, of organic matter, and from 8 to 



