The spirit of cookery

There figure in cookery-books recipes for Savoury Porridge, so called because of an addition of onions. According to our terminology, porridge can be savoury only if made with broth or standard solution of Proust’s extract of meat, or with cheese or mushrooms. Such porridge would be a transition to soups containing cereals, and we suppose that these latter will be the forms in which porridge will be known to future generations. Thin Porridge, or Gruel, is made with water or milk ; it requires boiling, and, if knotty, skimming and straining. Oatmeal and maizemeal should be steeped in water for several hours before being boiled, and afterwards should stew in a warm place or water-bath for several hours, to become perfectly smooth and soluble. The Yorkshire milk and oatmeal does not agree well with all persons on the first trial, and should be taken in moderate quantities. Gruel may be bound or thickened with a liaison of two yolks of eggs to the pint, and then should not be heated to boiling. In some of the casual wards of the London workhouses the gruel given as nutriment to able-bodied paupers passes under the name of skilly, a word perhaps derived from the name of a vessel used in cooking, called skillet (perhaps from Old French escuellette, diminutive of escuelle, Fr. dcuelle, from Lat. scutella, diminutive of scutra, a dish or plate, the word from which scullery {dishery) also is derived. Hence a scullion is a dish-washer. Macaroni and Nouilles, or Nudeln. While all Italy may be called the home of the macaroni, they are particularly well made at Naples from so-called Black Sea wheat, and prepared in many different ways, in soups, au gratin, as timbales, always accompanied with Parmesan cheese. The mass of the population of Naples lives upon macaroni, figs, garlic, and iced water. Macaroni can be made of wheat-flour only ; this is made into a stiff paste, and triturated under heavy rolling stones ; when the paste is finished it is pressed through cylinders, and shaped either into bands or the well-known tubes. Macaroni are eaten boiled with butter, cheese, and other garnishes. The first boiling should be carried only so far as is necessary to swell and soften them (che cresca in corpo), and should be done in water ; the second boiling, to completion of the coction, should be done in broth or milk, care to be taken not to overboil them and make them mashy and shapeless. We abstain from recording the numerous preparations of macaroni, which are all governed by a few principles. The timbales of the gratinatecl macaroni are all exquisite dishes ; the macaroni harmonize with brown butter, Swiss or Italian cheese, tomatoes, bechamel, and other sauce, and are always easily digested ; care to be taken in the gratination of macaroni. The colouring of cheese in the oven has the advantage that it enhances its taste and savour ; in this respect it resembles the osmazome of meat, which by browning, that is to say, by the abstraction of water under the influence of heat — caranielization — also assumes a greater influence on the gustatory nerves. But the moment the limit of this action is overstepped, the cheese or its browned product assumes a bitter, repellent taste, and is the reverse of savoury. For this reason preparations of cheese should never be deeply browned. Nouilles, or Nudeln, or German paste, are a preparation