The spirit of cookery

Marinades were originally solutions of sea-salt intended to preserve or flavour any description of meat suitable for being pickled. These solutions were flavoured and spiced in many ways, and in cases in which the preservation of the meat was subordinate to its being flavoured, the pickle became small in quantity, rose in quality, and was ultimately incorporated with the braise in which the meat was cooked. JELLIES, SAVOURY, SWEET, AND COMPOUND 259 Boiled Savoury Marinade is a sour savoury pickle, boiled to destroy hurtful bacteria. Cold Aqueous Marinade or Pickle consists of salt-water, vinegar, herbs and spices. Useful in places where there is much venison, or the master of the house kills his own beef and mutton. Short Marinade is a conventional expression for a mixture of oil and vinegar, with spices and herbs, in which certain kinds of meat are soaked for some hours before being cooked. Such marinades improve hare, and give to mutton a likeness to venison. Essences. Mushroom Catsup, Ketchuj}, or Ketchop, is the juice of mushrooms which exudes when they are kept salted in layers in a closed vessel for three or four days. CHAPTEE XIX. • JELLIES, SAVOURY, SWEET, AND COMPOUND. Theee are three varieties of jellies, or compounds to which we apply that name. The first variety are fncit jellies, obtained by mixing fruit juices with sugar, and stirring them until they begin to get thick ; by standing they then completely gelatinize. This effect is due to the presence in the fruit juice of a series of substances which have received various names — those of pectin, pectase, and pectose being the most accepted. The substances first roughly isolated by Braconnot, and by him called pectic acid, on separation, were found to be more neutral, like sugar and starch. The name is derived from the Greek pectos, curdled or frozen, gelatinized. This gelatinization takes place without the application of heat, if the juice be of good fruit, in a warm year. When the fruit juice is more watery, it must be 26o concentrated by heat, and then stirring is not so essential to gelatinization, as it is in the case of cold juice. Some kinds of fruit contain the gelatinizing principles in large quantity — quinces and apples, mangoes, and sometimes oranges. These principles, which belong to the starch, gum, or sugar family, contain no nitrogen, are therefore essentially different from the substance which is yielded by animal bodies and is called gelatine — when used for mechanical purposes, glue. Starch also yields very firm jelly, and is used for its production in blanc-mangers and other similar arrangements ; these are, therefore, congeners to the fruit jellies, and very much like them in taste and appearance ; when they are mixed with a little vegetable acid and some sugar [Bahat-Lahoum), they retain a fusibility by heat, but the gelatinizing faculty is not strong, and is easily lost by fusion and other influences. The latest substance which has been acquired for culinary use is the pure and cheap agar-agar, prepared in the Bast Indies from a seaweed. Its gelatinizing power is double that of animal gelatine. To prepare it for use, it is allowed to swell in cold water like gelatine, is then cut in small pieces, and dissolved in the liquid — be it water, wine, broth, or milk — which it is intended to gelatinize.