PURE AND IMPURE FOODS. 



" What a Man E.its He /»•." 



Edited by C. F. Lang worthy, Ph.D. 



Author of " On Citraconic, Itaconic and Mesaconic Acids," " Fish as Food,'' etc. 



THE CHRISTMAS GOOSE. 



To many, Christmas would not be com- 

 plete without its roast goose, and it seems an 

 almost necessary part of the famous Christ- 

 mases of literature. Was any Christmas 

 dinner ever better relished than that of the 

 Cratchits, Tiny Tim and the others, in Dick- 

 ens' "Christmas Carol," with its roast goose, 

 stuffed with sage and onions and brought in 

 high procession from the baker's by Master 

 Peter and the 2 young Cratchits, then eked 

 out with apple sauce and mashed potatoes, 

 and followed by the famous pudding boiled 

 in the wash-house copper? Of the goose 

 and its place in the diet, the' following state- 

 ments are made by Doctor Thudichum, who, 

 in his writings, has combined cookery, his- 

 tory, and philosophy in a most agreeable 

 way. 



"The goose was much valued in antiquity 

 as a delicate dish by the Egyptians, and by 

 the ancient Britons at the time of the in- 

 vasion of Julius Caesar. It was also sur- 

 rounded with a halo of sanctity, and used 

 as an authority for the authentification of an 

 oath by Rhadamanthus and his Lycian sub- 

 jects. At Rome, the goose was for a period 

 not eaten, but honored as the savior of the 

 Capitol from the besieging Gauls ; but after 

 Caesar's conquest of Gaul, geese, particularly 

 those from Picardy in France, were largelv 

 imported into and consumed in Rome. A 

 Roman consul, Metellus Scipio, invented, 

 according to Pliny, the art of fattening geese 

 and making their livers more delicate. The 

 learned physician, Julius Caesar Scaliger, 

 had much humorous admiration for these 

 animals. It may be interesting to cooks to 

 know that the French chemist Memery saw 

 a goose which had been trained by a cook 

 to turn a spit. It seized the handle with 

 its beak, and by alternately extending and 

 contracting its neck it did the work of a 

 turnspit. 



"A goose intended for roasting should not 

 be excessively fat, as it will lose most of 

 its grease during roasting. In trimming 

 and trailing the goose, the lungs, technically 

 called soal, or soul, which adhere to the 

 chest-wall, are not .removed. The goose 

 may receive various kinds of stuffing, of 

 which that made with sage and onions has 

 been popular, although, owing to the essen- 

 tial oil of the sage, it is rather indigestible. 

 The best stuffing for a goose are small 

 Dutch, or finger potatoes, sliced fine, salted 

 and peppered, and mixed with the kidney 

 and caul fat from the interior of the goose, 



finely chopped, or with half their weight of 

 suet or scraped bacon. The same treatment 

 is applicable to chestnuts when used to stuff 

 a goose. Some force or sausage meat may 

 be mixed with them to increase their taste. 

 The practice of eating apple sauce with 

 goose has given rise to a particular kind of 

 -stuffing, described by Soyer, in which the 

 apples and the sage and onions are blended 

 with grated boiled potatoes. A sharp sauce 

 for roast goose, described by Ignotus and 

 Kitchener, which was to be poured into the 

 body of the goose, called by the former 'a 

 secret worth knowing,' was evidently appre- 

 ciated by these authors. 



"A goose may be braised in the plain or 

 stuffed condition ; when well done it practi- 

 cally becomes roast goose, but admits of 

 being made more juicy. Stewed goose may 

 be immersed in an aciduous and savory 

 jelly or aspic. If the meat be boned it adds 

 to the convenience of the cook as well as 

 the consumer. 



"Where, as in the lake districts of North 

 Germany, hundreds of thousands of geese 

 are annually reared to serve as human food, 

 a great variety of preparations have to be 

 employed to make the several parts of the 

 animal eatable and transportable in a pre- 

 served state. The breast is mostly pickled 

 and smoked and sold as Pomeranian goose 

 breast. It is eaten raw in thin slices, like 

 Westphalian ham, with bread and butter, 

 and is of excellent taste. The livers are 

 transformed into pates. The other pieces 'of 

 the geese are made into a pickled and 

 stewed preparation, which is preserved in 

 fat and consumed gradually during the win-' 

 ter. It is called Pokel-Gans, pickled goose. 

 A similar mode of curing, cooking, and 

 preserving is practised at Bayonne, in 

 France." 



THE IMPROVEMENT OF ORCHARDS. 



The majority of persons, at least of 

 those who live in temperate climates, will 

 probably agree that in the long run no 

 fruit is so satisfactory as the apple. If 

 the dwellers in the tropics prefer other 

 fruits, it is perhaps because the apple does 

 not grow to perfection except in cooler 

 regions. Most of the tropical fruits bear 

 transportation to temperate regions, but 

 the best fruits of temperate regions can 

 not be so successfully transported to the 

 tropics and marketed there. Like all fresh 

 fruits, the apple is not very nutritious in 

 proportion to its bulk, containing as it 



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