A guide to modern cookery

young poultry or meats, very fat and tender, for they cannot go beyond their correct time of cooking, which equals that of roasts, without immediately losing all their quality. A quarter of an hour too much in the cooking of a kernel of veal weighing about six lbs. is enough to make the meat dry and unpalatable, and to thoroughly spoil it, whereas a brown braising cannot be over-cooked, provided it do not burn. White braised meats are generally glazed, and this process is especially recommended for larded pieces, which, though less common nowadays than formerly, can still claim many votaries. 249—POACHINGS However nonsensical it may sound, the best possible definition of a poaching is a boiling that does not boil. The term _poach_ is extended to all slow processes of cooking which involve the use of a liquor, however small. Thus the term poach applies to the cooking in _court-bouillon_ of large pieces of turbot and salmon, as well as to fillets of sole cooked with a little fish _fumet_, to hot _mousselines_ and _mousses_, cooked in moulds, to quenelles which are cooked in salted water, to eggs announced as “poached,” to creams, various royales, &c. It will readily be seen that among so many different products, the time allowed for the cooking in each case must differ sometimes widely from the rest. The treatment of them all, however, is subject to this unalterable principle, namely, that the poaching liquor must not boil, though it should reach a degree of heat as approximate as possible to boiling-point. Another principle is that large pieces of fish or poultry be set to boil in cold liquor, after which the latter is brought to the required temperature as rapidly as possible. The case may be the same with fillets of sole, or poultry, which are poached almost dry; but all other preparations whose mode of cooking is poaching gain by being immersed in liquor which has reached the required temperature beforehand. Having regard to the multitudinous forms and kinds of products that are poached, it would be somewhat difficult to state here