The girl's own cookery book

Jelly (I do not mean now beef-tea jelly, but calf's-foot jelly, and isinglass or gelatine jelly) has fallen very much in the estimation of doctors and nurses of late years. I can remember that when I was a girl, calf's-foot jelly was the one article of nourishment that was supplied before all others in cases of weakness. If any member of a family was taken ill, the cousins and the aunts, but especially the aunts, used to come round at once with superlative moulds of jelly, as furnishing undoubted proof of sympathy and affection. We children used to regard it as one of the compensations attending indisposition, that we were allowed to have an unlimited supply of the same. Of course calf's-foot jelly is a very different thing to gelatine jelly, but it is possible to estimate even calf's-foot jelly too highly.. Jelly is very good when mixed with other substances, which are nourishing, but taken alone, it serves too often to satisfy the appetite without doing ii8 The Girl’s Own Cookery Book. much good. Gelatine jelly made from the gelatine sold in packets is of no use. Hear what Miss Nightingale says about it : “Jelly is an article of diet in great favour with nurses and friends of the sick. Even if it could be eaten solid it would not nourish ; but it is simply folly to take one-eighth of an ounce of gelatine, and make it into a certain bulk by dissolving it in water, and then to give it to the sick, as if the mere bulk represented nourishment. It is now known that jelly does not nourish — that it has a tendency to produce diarrhoea ; and to trust to it to repair the waste of a diseased constitution is simply to starve the sick under the guise of feeding them. If one hundred spoonfuls of jelly were given in the course of the day, you would have given one spoonful of gelatine, which spoonful has no nutritive power whatever.” We must return, however, to our beef-tea, for I want to write a word or two about the best way of making it. I said a little while ago that the roll of the blade-bone of beef was the best part that could be chosen for making beef-tea. 1 must not forget to add that the butcher should be asked to supply freshly-killed meat, for that will be more full of gravy than well-kept beef. To make good beef-tea, take one pound of meat, trim away all fat and skin, cut the lean into very small pieces ; place these in a jar, pour over them one pint of cold water, and cover the jar closely ; leave the meat to soak for one hour, stirring and pressing it now and then to draw out the juice. At the end of this time put the jar, still closely covered, into a saucepan with boiling water, which will come half way up, but which cannot touch the paper, if paper has been tied over as a cover. Keep the water boiling round the jar for two or even three hours, then pour the tea from the meat, add a little salt, and it is ready for use. Put it in a cool place till wanted, and warm a little as required, but do not keep the tea hot till wanted or it will spoil. Mutton-tea or veal-tea may be made exactly in the same way as beef-tea. Perhaps girls feel inclined to say. Why should we not put the beef at once into the saucepan, and never mind the trouble of putting it into a jar first ? Because by Cookery for Invalids. 119