China Chilo

Ingredients

• some onions
• some lettuce
• some butter
• some spices
• rice boiled in broth

Method

1. 1

   Stew green peas with onions, lettuce, butter, and spices.

2. 2

   Serve with rice boiled in broth and moistened with butter.

As published

This recipe was extracted from The spirit of cookery (1895) by Johann Ludwig Wilhelm Thudichum, page 211. The excerpt below is the record exactly as published.

China chilo is a ragoiit of green peas and mutton, stewed with some onions, lettuce, butter, and spices, to be served with rice boiled in broth and moistened with butter. This is a most excellent dish, and is most conveniently eaten with a dessertspoon. 332 THE SPIRIT OF COOKERY Green French and Broad Beans and Scarlet Runners. Raw green beans, before the development of their seeds, have a decidedly sweet taste. Like cabbage, they undergo a fermentation, which, when it is guided by the addition of salt and proper treatment, results in the production of lactic acid — the characteristic ingredient of sour milk. Such fer- mented or sour beans are made and eaten by millions of inhabitants of the northern part of the continent of Europe, and in Russia are the principal vegetable food, by the availability of which throughout the winter the peasants produce some variety in their monotonous black bread and fish diet, and ward off scurvy. Now, this sweet taste and fermentability of beans is due to the presence of a sugar, which, as it was first discovered in beans, was called 2)Jiaseomannite, from i^iiaseohbs, the Latin diminutive of the Greek and Ijatin name for bean, and mannite, the sugar of manna, to which it appeared to have some similarity. It was next discovered that this was identical with a sugar which had been observed previously in flesh, and termed inosite ; but what was still more remarkable, it was found that it abounded regularly in the human brain. It was then observed in small quantities in many parts of vegetables, and some sweet Sauterne wines were found to owe their taste — at least, in part — to this carbo-hydrate. It crystal- lizes, and looks like a diminutive cauliflower. It is not capable of being fermented by yeast, but is decomposed by the lactic acid bacillus, and can be transformed into an explosive, equal in power to smokeless gunpowder. Now, seeing that inosite is unquestionably food for the brain as well as the muscles, it is right to look to its con- servation in our food, and avoid its extraction. Green beans should therefore never be boiled, whereby the bean- sugar is lost to a great extent in the water ; but should be stewed, so as to preserve all their immediate principles. BEANS AND HARICOT BEANS 333 The beau plant is interesting and instructive, not only chemically, but also biologically, because of its reactions under the influence of night and day. Its leaves droop at night and are drawn together, and are raised and expanded again with daylight. This action is produced by a special apparatus, which is fixed and easily visible at the base of every leaf. Thus, there is perhaps some connection between the sensitiveness of this plant and the fact that it elaborates a nutriment for brain and muscles. Steived scarlet runners (Turkish beans) should always be prepared with essence of meat, and their juice should be well reduced. French green beans are very insipid when boiled in water, but when stetved with broth become an excellent dish. Green broad beans may also be plain- boiled, and accompanied with a sauce or stewed. Stewed green beans improve in taste by being warmed up, probably by concentration. Haricot beans are the fruit of Phaseolus vulgaris. It is related by ancient writers that the great mathematician Pythagoras ordered his disciples to abstain from beans. We have been unable to find any record of the grounds of that interdict, and are inclined to doubt the allegation. It is probable that the beans received the prefix of haricot from their being used in a stew called haut-ragoiU, gradually corrupted to haricot. These beans, ordinarily white and dry and hard, have of late years been brought into the market, in the month of November, in a green state. Many of those which we examined had rootlets. When stewed they looked and tasted much like the dry haricot similarly prepared. They had probably been treated like the barley for malting, made to germinate, but simultaneously exposed to light so as to become green. For the culinary preparation of haricots, it is essential that they should be swelled in soft luater — i.e., water free from 334 THE SPIRIT OF COOKERY chalk and gypsum, or carbonate and sulphate of lime. Dis- tilled water is the best. Eain water and river water may be used in places ; but when there is hard water only avail- able, it should be softened by being boiled for half an hour, with the addition of a small quantity of carbonate of soda, a lump of the size of a filbert being sufficient for a quart of water. Further, the soaking of the beans must be effected during a sufficiency of time, not less than eight hours, and preferably overnight— f.e., during from twelve to eighteen hours. The stewing then becomes an easy process. Broth or standard solution of meat essence should always be added, as well as some butter

Cook this with the app: pantry check, scaling, and the assistant.