The Chemistry of Cookery

Some of the membranous gelatin is, I suspect, dehydrated when the highest temperature of the process is attained—_i.e._ when the concentration of the juices raises the boiling point of their solution considerably above that of pure water. This, if I am right, would check further solution of the membrane, would hydrate and harden the remainder, and thus contribute to the hardening of the fibre above described. I have entered into these anatomical and chemical details because it is only by understanding them that the difference between true tenderness and spurious tenderness of stewed meat can be soundly understood, especially in this country, where stewed meats are despised because scientific stewing is practically and generally an unknown art. Ask an English cook the difference between boiled beef or mutton and stewed beef or mutton, and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred her reply will be to the effect that stewed meat is that which has been boiled or simmered for a longer time than the boiled meat. She proceeds, in accordance with this definition, when making an Irish stew or similar dish, by ‘simmering’ at 212° until, by the coagulation and hardening of the albumen and syntonin, a leathery mass is obtained; then she continues the simmering until the gelatin of the areolar tissue is partially dissolved, and the toughened fibres separate or become readily separable. Having achieved this disintegration, she supposes the meat to be tender, the fact being that the fibres individually are tougher than they were at the leathery stage. The mischief is not limited to the destruction of the flavour of the meat, but includes the destruction of the nutritive value of its solid portion by rendering it all indigestible, with the exception of the gelatin, which is dissolved in the gravy. This exception should be duly noted, inasmuch as it is the one redeeming feature of such proceeding that renders it fairly well adapted for the cookery of such meat as cow-heels, sheeps’-trotters, calves’-heads, shins of beef, knuckles of veal, and other viands which consist mainly of membranous, tendinous, or integumentary matter composed of gelatin.