FoodNet

The spirit of cookery

1895

Page 76 · 2 recipe records on this page

Presented as published in 1895. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
I oz. of dried thyme-leaves ; ^ oz. of dried marjoram ; ^ oz. of dried savory ; i oz. of nutmeg ; ^ oz. of cloves ; \ oz. of whole black pepper ; ■§■ oz. of Nepa^il peppeSpiced Pepperr. Pound all these spices, and when ground to a powder pass this through a sieve, bottle it, and keep the bottle . securely corked. This mixture imparts a nice sausage flavour to savoury pies, rolled beef, brawn, savoury pCiUs, and all force-meat. * On ‘Bpiced pepper,’ cf. ‘Wyvern,’ loc, cit., p. Ill, 104 THE SPIRIT OF COOKERY Spiced Salt. Spiced salt* is made by mixing 1 oz. of spiced p>epper with 4 oz. of salt. Before pepper was confined to special boxes or caraffines of the cruet-stand, it was generally served in this form, and stood on the table in a salt-cellar, as does now our pure salt. CHAPTER VI. BOUILLON, OR MEAT-BROTH; ITS DEVELOPMENT AND ROLE IN THE HISTORY OF COOKERY. Historical Introduction. ‘ The sapid principle of meat may be described without exaggeration as the quintessence of the art of cookery.’ — Louis Proust. ‘ French cookery owes its superiority over that of other nations only to (the excellence of French) bouillon.’ — Alexandre Dumas. Whatever influence the Italians of the Renaissance may have exercised upon French cookery, to the French must be allowed the merit of having made bouillon, or broth, the foundation of the taste of all moist savoury preparations, and of having thereby made a great number of dishes more wholesome as well as more tasty than they were before this development. Amongst the ancient as well as the later Italians, the broth of meat remained almost unused, for even ‘ the capon-broth with flour-paste ’ (macaroni) men- tioned by early Italian novelists was used only on a very limited area, and had certainly no general application.! Greeks and Romans possessed large quantities of more or less fine olive-oil, and used this generally for penetrating * ‘ Spiced salt,’ mentioned by Gouffe, and after him Wyvern. f Of. Rumohr, loc. cit., p. 10. BOUILLON, OR ME AT- BROTH 105 moist dishes with its flavour and richness ; but this induced an excessive use of hot spices to counteract the sometimes sickening, or at all events unsympathetic, effect of a greasy diet, a result to which already Pliny* objected, and which may nevertheless be observed to be a matter of daily occur- rence in many parts of Europe. Where this oil was unavailing to impart taste and appe- tising qualities, certain extracts, we might term them sauces (liquamina) were used. Certain absurd reports, such as that these were made with the aid of salted pears, we may set aside, just as we set aside the fable of our days, that soy contained as a material ingredient extract from blackbeetles, while accepting the report of the preparation of some liqtiamina from valuable fish. Here, then, we have an approach to stock and glace ; the preparation of garum, when its history is properly interpreted, tended in the same direction. But the jiira and juscula, as described sufficiently in the work bearing the name of Apicius, were by no means con- stituted of strong meat-broth, but were mixtures of oil, acids, spices, and vegetable juices, the effect of which was calculated merely with reference to immediate desire for stimulation of the tongue and palate.