Part 29 (1/2)
But the difficulty alluded to is, how to select a few choice dishes from the wide range--short of flesh and fish--which G.o.d and nature permit.
For if we believed in the use of eggs when commingled with food, we should hardly deem it proper to go the whole length of our French brethren, who have nearly seven hundred vegetable dishes, of which eggs form a component part; nor the whole length even to which our own powers of invention might carry us; no, nor even the whole length to which the writer of an English work now before us, and ent.i.tled ”Vegetable Cookery,” has gone--the extent of about a thousand plain receipts. We believe the whole nature of man, and even his appet.i.te, when unperverted, is best served and most fully satisfied with a range of dishes which shall hardly exceed hundreds.
It is held by Dr. Dunglison, Dr. Paris, and many of the old school writers, that all made dishes--all mixtures of food--are ”more or less rebellious;” that is, more or less indigestible, and consequently more or less hurtful. If they mean by this, that in spite of the accommodating power of the stomach to the individual, they are hurtful to the race, I go with them most fully. But I do _not_ believe that _all made dishes, to all persons_, are so directly injurious as many suppose.
G.o.d has made man, in a certain sense, omnivorous. His physical stomach can receive and a.s.similate, like his mental stomach, a great variety of substances; and both can go on, without apparent disease, for a great many years, and perhaps for a tolerably long life in this way.
There is, however, a higher question for man to ask as a rational being and as a Christian, than whether this or that dish will hurt him directly. It is, whether a dish or article is _best_ for him--best for body, mind, and heart--best for the whole human nature--best for the whole interests of the whole race--best for time, and best for eternity.
Startle not, reader, at this a.s.sertion. If West could properly say, ”I paint for eternity,” the true disciple of Christ and truth can say, ”I eat and drink for eternity.” And a higher authority than any that is merely human has even required us to do so.
This places the subject of preparing food on high ground. And were I to carry out my plan fully, I should exclude from a Christian system of food and cookery all mixtures, properly so called, and all medicines or condiments. Not that all mixtures are equally hurtful to the well-being of the race, nor all medicines. Indeed, considering our training and habits, some of both, to most persons, have become necessary. I know of many whose physical inheritance is such, that salt, if not a few other medicinal substances, have become at least present necessaries to them.
And to those mixtures of substances closely allied, as farina with farina--meal of one kind with meal of another--I could scarcely have any objection, myself. Nature objects to incompatibles, and therefore I do; and medicine, and all those kinds of food which are opposed one to another, are incompatible with each other. When one is in the stomach, the other should not be.
I have spoken of carrying out my plan, but this I cannot now fully do.
It would not be borne, till, as Lord Bacon used to say, ”some time be pa.s.sed over.” But, on the other hand, I am unwilling to give directions, as I did ten or twelve years ago, in my Young Housekeeper, such as shall pander to a perverted--most abominably perverted--public taste. Man is made for progress, and it is high time the public standard were raised in regard to food and cookery.
Although grains and fruits are the natural food of man, yet there are a variety of shapes in which the grains or farinacea may be presented to us; and there are a few substances fit for food which do not properly belong to either of these cla.s.ses. I shall treat first of the different kinds of food prepared from grain or farinaceous substances; secondly, of fruits; thirdly, of roots; and fourthly, speak of a few articles that do not properly belong to any of the three.
While, therefore, as will be seen by the remarks already made, I have many things to say that the community cannot yet bear, it need not escape the observation of the most careless reader, that I aim at nothing less than an entire ultimate subversion of the present system of cookery, believing it to be utterly at war with the laws of G.o.d, and of man's whole nature.
CLa.s.s I.--FARINACEOUS, OR MEALY SUBSTANCES.
The princ.i.p.al of these are wheat, oats, Indian corn, rice, rye, barley, buckwheat, millet, chestnuts, peas, beans, and lentils. They are prepared in various forms.
DIVISION I.--BREAD.
The true idea of bread is that coa.r.s.e or cracked and unbolted meal, formed into a ma.s.s of dough by means of water, and immediately baked in loaves of greater or less thickness, according to the fancy.
Some use bolted meal; most raise bread by fermentation; many use salt; some saleratus, or carbonate of potash; and, in the country, many use milk instead of water to form the paste. I might also mention several other additions, which, like saleratus, it is becoming fas.h.i.+onable to make.
All these things are a departure, greater or less, from the true idea of a bread; and bread made with any of these changes, is so much the less perfectly adapted to the promotion of health, happiness, and longevity.
Bolting is objectionable, because bread made from bolted meal, especially when eaten hot, is more apt, when the digestive powers are not very vigorous, to form a paste, which none but very strong stomachs can entirely overcome. Besides, it takes out a part of the sweetness, or life, as it is termed, of the flour. They who say fine flour bread is sweetest, are led into this mistake by the force of habit, and by the fact that the latter comes in contact, more readily than coa.r.s.e bread, with the papillae of the tongue, and seems to have more taste to it because it touches at more points.
Raising bread by inducing fermentation, wastes a part of the saccharine matter; and the more it is raised, the greater is the waste. By lessening the attraction of cohesion, it makes it more easy of digestion, it is true; but the loss of nutriment and of pleasure to the true appet.i.te more than counterbalances this. Bakers, in striving to get a large loaf, rob the bread of most of its sweetness.
Salt is objectionable, because it hardens the bread, and renders it more difficult of digestion. Our ancestors, in this country, did not use it at all; and many are the families that will not use it now.
Those who use salt in bread, tell us how _flat_ it would taste without it. This idea of flatness has two sources. 1. We have so long given our bread the taste of salt, as we have most other things, that it seems tasteless without it. 2. The flatness spoken of in an article of food is oftentimes the true taste of the article, unaltered by any stimulus. If any two articles need to be stimulated with salt, however, it is rice and beans--bread never.
If saleratus is used in bread where no acidity is present, it is a medicine; or, if you please, a poison both to the stomach and intestines. If it meets and neutralizes an acid either in the bread-tray or the stomach, the residuum is a new chemical compound diffused through the bread, which is more or less injurious, according to its nature and quant.i.ty.
Milk is objectionable on the score of its tendency to render the bread more indigestible than when it was wet with water, and perhaps by rendering it too nutritious. For good bread without the milk is already too nutritious for health, if eaten exclusively, for a long time. That man should not live on bread alone, is as true physically as it is morally.
No bread should be eaten while new and hot--though the finer it is, the worse for health when thus eaten. Old bread, heated again, is less hurtful. But if eaten both new and hot, and with b.u.t.ter or milk, or any thing which soaks and fills it, the effect is very bad. Mrs. Howland, in her Economical Housekeeper, says much about _ripe_ bread. And I should be glad to say as much, had I room, about ripe bread, and about the true philosophy of bread and bread-making, as she has.
SECTION A.--_Bread of the first order._
This is made of coa.r.s.e meal--as coa.r.s.e as it can well be ground, provided the kernels are all broken. The grain should be well washed, and it may be ground in the common way, or according to the oriental mode, in hand-mills. The latter mode is preferable, because you can thus have it fresh. Meal is somewhat injured by being kept long ground.