Foods / by Edward Smith.

  • Smith, Edward, 1818?-1874.
Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Foods / by Edward Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    49/528 (page 19)
    decomposition which is often approved. The nutri- tious elements, speaking generally, are the same in each state until the effects of decomposition appear, hut the nutritive qualities, being dependent upon the power to masticate and digest the flesh, may be really less in the second than in either of the other states. The desired effect may be produced at any stage in a rough manner by cutting the flesh into slices and beating it across the cut ends until the fibres are broken and the connecting tissues forced asunder ; but to effect this the slices must be thin. The effect of cooking flesh is chiefly physical, and is chemical in a very limited sense ofaly. When meat is either roasted or boiled, it decreases in bulk and weight, and the cooked food is generally less soft than fresh meat in the first state. The diminution in bulk and weight is owing to the extraction of the juices of so much of the mass of flesh as may have been acted upon by the heat, and these are chiefly water containing salts, and the peculiar flavour of meat, with a proportion of fat in a fluid state, gelatin, and perhaps some albumen. The flesh thus treated becomes contracted in bulk, from loss of the juices and by coagulation of the albumen, whilst the mass is composed of solid fibrin, with a pro- portion of albumen, and the juices and fat which have not been extracted. The tubes having lost much of their contents, shrink and separate from each other, and so far the meat may be made more tender; but this varies in degree, and is often more than counterbalanced by the hardening of the albuminous contents of the tubes. The object of cooking is to render the flesh more submissive to mastication and digestion, but it may be entirely frustrated if the substance of the flesh be hardened in any appreciable degree. It is also em-