The Chemistry of Cookery

of having veal cutlets fried in a bath previously used for fish, and was not able to detect any fishy flavour as I expected I should. This was the case even when I knew that the fish fat had been used, and I was consequently far more critical than under ordinary circumstances. Even apple-fritters may be cooked in fat that has been used for fish. I have tried this since the above was written and am surprised at the result. CHAPTER VIII. STEWING. SOME of my readers may think that I ought to have treated this in connection with the boiling of meat, as boiling and stewing are commonly regarded as mere modifications of the same process. According to my mode of regarding the subject, _i.e._ with reference to the object to be attained, they are opposite processes. The object in the so-called ‘boiling’ of, say, a leg of mutton, is to raise the temperature of the meat throughout just up to the cooking temperature in such a manner that it shall as nearly as possible retain all its juices; the hot water merely operating as a vehicle or medium for conveying the heat. In stewing nearly all this is reversed. The juices are to be extracted more or less completely, and the water is required to act as a solvent as well as a heat-conveyor. Instead of the meat itself surrounding and enveloping the juices as it should when boiled, roasted, grilled, or fried, we demand in a stew that the juices shall surround or envelop the meat. In some cases the separation of the juices is the sole object, as in the preparation of certain soups and gravies, of which ‘beef-tea’ may be taken as a typical example. _Extractum carnis_, or Liebig’s ‘Extract of Meat’ is beef-tea (or mutton-tea) concentrated by evaporation. The juices of lean meat may be extracted very completely without cooking the meat at all, merely by mincing it and then placing it in cold water. _Maceration_ is the proper name for this treatment. The philosophy of this is interesting, and so little understood in