Mince for Invalids

Ingredients

• the meat must be minced raw
• a little salt
• a little good broth

Method

1. 1

   Minced raw meat should be sprinkled with salt and moistened with broth.

2. 2

   Warm slowly without boiling; it cooks quickly when hot.

Nutrition per serving

As published

This recipe was extracted from Practical home cookery (1906) by A. G. Payne, page 98. The excerpt below is the record exactly as published.

a little salt. Then take a fork and squeeze these pieces in every direction, in order, as much as possible, to extract the juices out of the pieces of meat. Next place it all — i.e. water and meat — in an enamelled saucepan, and place it by the side of the fire, not on the i84 practical HOME COOKERY. fire, and gradually heat it, taking the greatest care that it does not boil. Having continued this process for about an hour and a half or two hours, during the last half-hour keeping the beef-tea hot without boiling, strain the whole off through a strainer, pressing the meat again with a spoon, so as to squeeze as much as possible all the goodness out of it. Then remove all the fat. This can be done by care- fully skimming it, or, if time will allow, by letting it get cold, when the fat will harden on the top. Now, to my mind, good beef-tea is one of the nicest things we can take when ill, but sick persons often tire of it, and loathe it. When this is the case, very often by adding a little sherry, and allowing it to get cold — when, if properly made, it will be a jelly — patients will take it in this form when they could not in the liquid state. Veal broth and mutton broth are made on exactly the same principles as beef -tea, of course substituting either veal or mutton for the beef, and taking equal care to remove all the fat, and not to let the liquor boil. Another method of making beef-tea very simply, in a way in which no careful watcliing is required, is to cut up a pound of gravy-beef as before, and simply put it with a pint of water into a stone jar, and put the jar in the oven ; if the oven is not too hot — i.e. not hot enough to absolutely make the liquid boil in the jar — this way wiU be found to be very good. Or the jar may be tied over with a cloth, and placed in a large saucepan of boiling water on the fire, the water in the saucepan to be kept gently simmering. Very often young children, and even babies, are ordered beef-tea. Now all mothers know the difficulty at times of inducing sick children to take anything, and beef-tea by no means recommends itself to a child’s appetite. Forcing food down a child’s throat against its will should never be resorted to, save as a last resource. FOOD FOR INVALIDS. 185 and at the doctor’s order. There are many means, however, by which little children can be persuaded to take things, which sensible mothers probably know of. In the case of beef-tea an admirable plan is, instead of using salt, use a little sugar, and make the beef-tea sweet. Grown-up persons would probably consider such a mixture nasty to a degree ; not so, however, the child. Young children have a natural taste for sweet things, and a natural dislike to salt. In very early hfe the food that nature has supplied for children is sweet. Salt, on the other hand, is decidedly an acquired taste. Our dear old friend Robinson Crusoe had considerable difficulty in in- ducing his man Friday to eat salt ; and when he did, it was only in very small quantities. The next dish of importance for consideration is arro\vroot. First I would strongly recommend the Bermuda arrowroot, and not the St. Vincent ; the latter is cheaper, but very inferior in quahty. Bad arrowroot is absolutely unwholesome, and a good deal of the bad arrowroot — too bad, in fact, to be sold as arrowroot at all — is, I fear, used to mix with and adul- terate corn-flour. The first point to ascertain is whether the patient wiU take the arrowroot thick or thin ; some persons have strong prejudices on this point, and thick arrow- root will require double the quantity of thin. Arrow- root is also made with water and milk, but the method is the same for both. Take a spoonful or two of cold water or milk, as the case may be, and mix in the powdered arrowroot in the cup or basin, and stir it up thoroughly ; then pour the boihng water or milk slowly on to it, keeping it stirred the whole time. A little sugar may be added, and of course, when allowable, a httle wine or brandy is a great improvement. When made with milk, a httle grated nutmeg on the top also i86 PRACTICAL HOME COOKERY. vastly improves the compound both in flavour and appearance. A great deal of the prepared cocoa is simply cocoa and arrowroot mixed, consequently when the bothng water is poured on, the arrowroot causes the cocoa to look thick and nourishing. If you want to make a good cup of chocolate out of cake chocolate, all you have to do is to mix a little arrowroot in the cup with it, and the result will be that the chocolate will appear to be ten times as strong as it would otherwise do. With regard to chicken broth, that fashionable in- vahd’s preparation many years ago, we ought to say a few words, and these few will be unfavourable. There is, comparatively speaking, but httle nourishment in it. In any case, however, should you make any, bear in mind that it is the bones, and not the flesh, that make the broth ; so instead of wasting the whole fowl over the broth, cut off the meat, which can be made into nice rissoles or mince, and use the bones only for the broth. Now minced mutton or chicken is often recom- mended for invalids, as being easily digested ; but pray remember that invahd mince is very different from the ordinary mince of every-day hfe. In the first place, we all know that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred mince is made from meat that has been cooked before. Now mince so made, though very nice and wholesome for persons and children in ordinary health, yet is by no means so easy of digestion — i,e. the remains of a leg of mutton minced the second day would be less digestible than the cut off the joint on the first day, the warming-up process having naturally a tendency to harden the meat. To make nice mince for an invahd, the meat must be minced raw. It must then be sprinkled with a httle salt, moistened with a httle good broth,

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