BROTH.

Soup, meat, and vegetables are the principal dishes of a plain household dinner.

When examining this more closely, we find the selection so judicious that we may well admire the tact of woman, who discovered it long before science did.

The good tact of woman does even more yet; it selects the dishes in such a manner that they mutually compensate for their wants, that is, that each offers to the body what is wanting in the others.

The principal dishes composing a meal are divided into fat-producing and flesh-producing ones. All farinaceous diet provides the body with fat; all albumen substances, with flesh. To support the body, however, it is also necessary to give it salt, from which bones, hair, nails and teeth may be formed.

Our domestic wives, indeed, look to all that. Long before scientific men had investigated the necessity for nutriment of the kind, all-providing woman had arranged culinary matters so as to be able to satisfy all the demands of nature. But not only the proper selection of articles of food,—the way and manner also in which they are cooked and served, are of prime importance to a proper nutrition; and we maintain that household fare may justly be regarded as a guide for scientific investigations.

A judicious housewife will first of all place meat on the fire, to have good soup and well-cooked meat. She will prefer beef to any other kind, because it contains but little fat and much albumen and animal fibre; for this reason it makes better broth, and still preserves strength enough to be a healthy, strength-giving dish.

Besides, meat, by cooking, becomes more nutritive, inasmuch as its digestibility is greatly facilitated. One of the most important tasks of the cook consists in promoting one's digestion; in other words, in saving the stomach labor. Flesh in its raw state keeps its nutritive elements shut up in cells which are gluey. By boiling it, the gelatine becomes soft and mixes with the water; hence it comes that broth is glutinous, and, if allowed to cool, becomes thick and like jelly. This substance is in part very nourishing; it is often obtained from bones and cartilages, and then sold under the name of "bouillon-tables," which, when boiled in water, make a tolerably good soup. Thus we see that the first object of all cooking is the dissolving of the cellular tissues. Not before this is done do we obtain the real nutritive element of the flesh, which then is taken up by the stomach all the easier, inasmuch as it has thus been well prepared to be easily changed into blood.

But before the meat reaches the boiling-point, albumen is separated from its surface and mixes with the water; it is this which gives broth its real strength and nutritive power. Afterwards, when the water boils, this albumen condenses; the broth becomes white, as if containing the white of eggs; from the inside of the meat flows continually more and more albumen into the broth, and makes it stronger and stronger. During this time, moreover, the fat parts of the meat melt, and its salts are also dissolved in the broth; hence a great deal of the most nutritive parts of the meat goes over into the broth; and although much of the strength of the meat has been withdrawn, still there is much of it left yet, and the meat has now become easier to masticate and easier to be digested. We need not add that a sufficient quantity of salt is thrown into the soup, which quickly dissolves in the water; but in the same degree that the meat excretes a part of its ingredients and gives them to the water, in the same measure does the meat absorb salt. By this it becomes not only more tasteful and digestible, but also more nutritive. It was not until recently that the importance of salt as a nutritive was recognized; this cannot be otherwise, for the tissues of the human body, as well as its blood and cartilages, need salt for their formation and support. Who does not know that every farmer gives his cattle salt from time to time, so as to improve their strength and general health?

Our readers will readily understand now, that the weaker the broth the stronger must be the meat, and vice versÂ. It often occurs that we care less to have good broth than good beef. In such cases we must not put the meat into cold water, but into boiling water. So soon as the meat is thrown into boiling water, the albumen on the outside coagulates, surrounding the whole piece as it were with a hard crust, which does not permit the nutritive parts of the inside to escape. The same effect is produced by the roasting of the meat in an oven, although here it is not covered by water. It is more judicious, however, and more important for the household, to make good broth, and to let dinner commence with it.

For he who has been at work all the forenoon, needs such food at first as will not cause his stomach too much labor; and soup is that food. Let every good housewife bear this in mind.