254 



• KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[Oct. 26, 1883. 



She proceeds, iii 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 gelatine of the 

 areolar tissue is dissolved, and the toughened fibres separate 

 or become readily separable. Having achieved this disin- 

 tegration, 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 

 gelatine 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, tendi- 

 nous, or integumentary matter composed of gelatine. To 

 •treat the prime parts of good beef or umtton in this 

 manner is to perpetrate a domestic atrocity. 



I am not yet able to record the result of stewing a 

 sirloin of beef in accordance with the scientific principles 

 expounded in my last. Have no hopes of being able to do 

 ■so until I can spare time to stand by the kitchen fire with 

 thermometer in hand from beginning to end of the process, 

 or have constructed a stewing-pot, big enough for the 

 purpose, so arranged that its contents cannot possibly by 

 any efl'ort of ingenious perversity be raised above 180°. 

 The domestic superstition concerning simmering is so wide- 

 spread and inveterate that every normally-constituted cook 

 stubbornly believes that simmering water is of much lower 

 tgmperature than boiling water, and, therefore, any amount 

 of instruction or injunctions for the maintenance of a heat 

 below boiling will be stubbornly translated into an order for 

 " gentle simmering," a quarter of an hour of which would 

 spoil the sirloin. 



I may, however, 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. In- 

 stead 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 simmer- 

 ing. 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 farm-house 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 is now coming to an end, old hens will soon be a 

 drug in the market, and those among my readers who have 

 not a hen roost of their own will oblige their poulterers by 

 ordering a hen th;.t 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 

 oSers the double economy of utilising a nearly waste 

 product and obtaining chicken-broth and roast fowl 

 simultaneously. 



One of the great advantages of stewing is that it aflbrds 

 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. 



The wife of the French or Swiss landed proprietor, 

 i.e., the peasant, cooks the family dinner with less than 

 a tenth of the expenditure of fuel used in England for 

 the preparation of an inferior meal. A little charcoal under 

 her bain-marie does it all. The economy of time corre- 

 sponds to the economy of fuel, for the mixture of viands 

 recjuired for the stew once put into the pot is left to itself 

 until dinner-time, or at most an occasional stirring of fresh 

 charcoal into the embers is all that is demanded. 



THE MORALITY OF HAPPINESS. 



By Thomas Foster. 



{Ccmtinued from page 200.) 



TT^E approach novc the heart of the matter. We have 

 V > seen how conduct has been evolved in the various 

 races of living creatures, from the lowest to man the highest. 

 We have learned how closely related are men's ideas of 

 good and bad to that which is the chief end of all conduct — 

 the preservation and extension of life. And we have found 

 that while the conception of rightness and wrongness is not 

 very marked in relation to conduct affecting self-life, it 

 becomes clear and obvious in relation to conduct affecting 

 the life of offspring, and attains its greatest definiteness and 

 as it were emphasis in its application to conduct affecting 

 the lives of others. Where the rules determining right 

 and wrong in regard to the life of self, of olfspring, and of 

 others, come into conflict, as they must until social relations 

 Ijecome perfect, the right in regard to self mostly gives way 

 to right in regard to offspring, and both usually give way to 

 right in regard to the rest of human kind. But in Mr. 

 Spencer's words (I quote them with emphasis) because 

 he has been so preposterously and indeed wickedly charged 

 with teaching a very different doctrine) " the conduct called 

 good rises to the conduct conceived as best, when it fulfils 

 all three classes of ends at the same time. 



But now the vital question of all comes before us. 



We conceive as good or bad such conduct as conduces or 

 the reverse to life and the fulness of life, in self and others. 

 But is conduct of the one kind really good or conduct of 

 the other kind really bad ? Though good or bad with re- 

 ference to that particular end, and though held to hie right 

 or wrong because that end is actually in view among men, 

 may not conduct be differently judged when the nature of 

 that end is considered ? In other words, the question 

 comes before us. Is life worth living 1 We need not take 

 either the optimist view according to which life is very 

 good, or the pessimist view according to which it is very 

 bad. But each one of us from his experience as regards his 

 own life, and from his observation (often most misleading, 

 however) on the lives of others, may be led to hold that on 

 the whole life is good, or that on the whole it is bad. Of 

 course in the very theory of the evolution of conduct, or 

 ratlier in the series of observed facts demonstrating the evo- 

 lution of conduct, we see that life and the fulness of life are 

 fought for throughout nature as if they were good. In the 

 highest race the love of life in self, which assumes that the 

 life of others also is good, has attained its highest expres- 

 sion. " Everything that a man has he will give for his 



