Science in the Kitchen Part 49

EGG GRUEL NO. 2.--Boil the yolks of three eggs until dry and mealy, mash perfectly smooth, then add a cup of boiling milk. Season with salt, and serve.

FARINA GRUEL.--Moisten two table spoonfuls of farina with a very little cold milk, and stir it into a cupful of boiling water. Boil until it thickens, add a cupful of new milk, turn into a double boiler, and cook again for twenty or thirty minutes. Strain if necessary, season with salt or sugar, and serve.

FLOUR GRUEL.--Rub one heaping tablespoonful of whole-wheat flour to a thin paste with three tablespoonfuls of cold milk, and stir it into a pint of boiling milk. Cook for ten or twelve minutes. Season with salt, strain if necessary, and while hot, stir in the beaten white of one egg.

The egg may be omitted if preferred; or the yolk of the egg and a little sugar may be used instead, if the patient's condition will allow it.

GLUTEN GRUEL.--Stir two and one half tablespoonfuls of the wheat gluten prepared by the Sanitarium Food Co., Battle Creek, Mich., into a pint of boiling milk; boil until thickened, when it is ready to serve.

GLUTEN GRUEL NO. 2.--Into a pint of boiling water stir three heaping tablespoonfuls of the prepared gluten. Boil until thickened, and add a half cup of thin cream.

GLUTEN CREAM.--Heat a pint of thin cream to boiling, and stir into it three tablespoonfuls of wheat gluten. When thickened, it is ready to serve.

GLUTEN MEAL GRUEL.--Into a cup and a half of boiling water stir four tablespoonfuls of gluten meal (prepared by the Sanitarium Food Co.), let it boil for a moment, add six tablespoonfuls of rather thin, sweet cream, and serve.

GRAHAM GRUEL.--Heat three cups of water in the inner dish of a double boiler, and when vigorously boiling stir into it carefully, a little at a time, so as not to check the boiling, one scant cup of Graham flour which has been rubbed perfectly smooth in a cup of warm, not hot, water. Stir until thickened, then place in the outer boiler and cook for an hour or longer. When done, strain if necessary, season with salt if desired, and a half cup of sweet cream.

GRAHAM GRITS GRUEL.--Cook three heaping tablespoonfuls of Graham grits in a quart of boiling water, as directed in the chapter on Grains, for three hours. Turn through a soup strainer to remove any lumps, season with half a cup of cream, and salt if desired. Well cooked Graham grits may be made into gruel by thinning with water or milk, straining and seasoning as above.

GRUEL OF PREPARED FLOUR.--Knead a pint of flour with water into a ball, and tie firmly in a linen cloth; put it into a granite-ware basin or kettle, cover with boiling water, and boil slowly, replenis.h.i.+ng with boiling water as needed, for twelve hours. Put it before the fire to dry. Afterward remove the cloth, and also a thick skin which will have formed over the ball. Dry the interior again. When needed for use, rub a tablespoonful of the prepared flour smooth with three spoonfuls of cold milk, and stir it into a pint of boiling milk. Cook from three to five minutes. Season with salt if desired.

INDIAN MEAL GRUEL.--Make a thin paste of one teaspoonful of flour, two tablespoonfuls of best cornmeal, and a little water. Stir this into a quart of boiling water, or milk and water in equal proportions, as preferred. Boil until the meal has set, stirring constantly; then turn into a double boiler and cook for an hour and half or two hours. Season with salt, and strain. If too thick, thin with milk or cream.

LEMON OATMEAL GRUEL.--The United States Dispensary recommends the following method of preparing oatmeal gruel for fever patients; "Rub one heaping tablespoonful of fine oatmeal smooth in a little cold water; stir this into three pints of boiling water. Cook until the quant.i.ty is reduced to two pints; then strain, and let it cool and settle. When it is quite cold, pour the clear gruel from the sediment, add the juice of a lemon, and sugar to sweeten slightly. If desirable to serve it warm, reheat before adding the lemon juice." Freshly cooked oatmeal may be thinned with boiling water, strained and seasoned in the same manner.

MILK OATMEAL GRUEL.--Take a pint of milk and one of water, and heat to boiling. Stir in three heaping table spoonfuls of oatmeal, and cook in a double boiler for two or three hours.

MILK PORRIDGE.--Take one pint of milk and the same quant.i.ty of water, and heat to boiling. Stir in two heaping tablespoonfuls of cornmeal or Graham grits, boil, stirring continuously, until the meal has set, then turn into a double boiler and cook for two hours or longer. Season with salt, and a tablespoonful of sweet cream if allowed.

OATMEAL GRUEL.--Into one quart of boiling water stir two heaping tablespoonfuls of fine oatmeal; let it boil until it thickens, stirring all the time; then turn into a double boiler and cook for three and a half or four hours. Strain before serving. A little cream may also be added, unless contra-indicated by the patient's condition.

OATMEAL GRUEL NO. 2.--Pound one half cup of coa.r.s.e oatmeal until it is mealy. The easiest way to do this is to tie the oatmeal in a coa.r.s.e cloth and pound it with a wooden mallet. Put it in a pint bowl, and fill the bowl with cold water. Stir briskly for a few moments until the water is white, then allow the meal to settle. Pour off the water, being careful to get none of the sediment. Fill the bowl a second time with cold water, stir thoroughly, let settle, and pour off the water as before. Do this the third time. Boil the liquid one half hour, strain, and serve hot. If very thick, a little cream or milk may be added.

OATMEAL GRUEL NO, 3.--Add to one cup of well-cooked oatmeal while hot two cups of hot milk, or one cup of hot milk and one of hot water.

Beat all thoroughly together, add a little salt if desired, strain, and serve.

PEPTONIZED GLUTEN GRUEL.--Prepare the gruel as directed for Gluten Gruel No. 1. Strain if needed, cook to lukewarm, and turn it into a pitcher, which place in a dish containing hot water even in depth with the gruel in the pitcher; add the peptonizing fluid or powder, stir well, and let it stand in the hot water bath for ten minutes. The temperature must not be allowed to rise over 130. Put into a clean dish and serve at once, or place on ice till needed. Other well-cooked gruels maybe peptonized in the same way.

RAISIN GRUEL.--Stone and quarter two dozen raisins and boil them twenty minutes in a small quant.i.ty of water. When the water has nearly boiled away, add two cups of new milk. When the milk is boiling, add one heaping tablespoonful of Graham or whole-wheat flour which has been rubbed to a thin paste with a little cold milk. Boil until thickened, stirring all the time; then turn into a double boiler and cook for twenty minutes or half an hour. Season with salt and serve.

RICE WATER.--Wash half a cup of rice very thoroughly in several waters. Put it into a saucepan with three cups of cold water and boil for half an hour. Strain off the rice water, season with salt if desired, and serve.

PREPARATIONS OF MILK.

MILK DIET.--An almost exclusive milk diet is sometimes a great advantage in cases of sickness. It is usually necessary to begin the use of the milk in moderate quant.i.ties, gradually withdrawing the more solid food and increasing the quant.i.ty of milk. In the course of a week, all other food should be withdrawn, and the quant.i.ty of milk increased to three or four quarts a day. Milk is easily digested, and hence may be taken at more frequent intervals than other food.

_RECIPES._

ALb.u.mINIZED MILK.--Shake together in a well-corked bottle or gla.s.s fruit can, a pint of fresh milk and the well-beaten whites of two eggs, until thoroughly mixed. Serve at once.

HOT MILK.--Hot milk is an excellent food for many cla.s.ses of invalids. The milk should be fresh, and should be heated in a double boiler until the top is wrinkled over the entire surface.

JUNKET, OR MILK CURD.--Heat a cup of fresh milk to 85, add one teaspoonful of the essence of pepsin, and stir just enough to mix thoroughly. Let it stand until firmly curded, and serve.

KOUMISS.--Dissolve one fourth of a two-cent cake of compressed yeast, and two teaspoonfuls of white sugar, in three tablespoonfuls of lukewarm water. Pour this into a quart bottle and add sufficient fresh, sweet milk to nearly fill. Shake well, and place in a room of the temperature of 70 to 80 F., and allow it to ferment about six hours.

Cork tightly and tie the cork in. Put in a cool place, act above 60 and let it remain a week, when it will be ready for use. In making koumiss be sure that the milk is pure, the bottle sound, and the yeast fresh.

Open the bottle with a champagne tap. If there is any curd or thickening resembling cheese, the fermentation has been prolonged beyond the proper point, and the koumiss should not be used.

MILK AND LIME WATER.--In cases where milk forms large curds, or sours in the stomach, lime water prepared in the following manner may be added to the milk before using:--

Into a gallon jar of water, put a piece of lime the size of one's fist.

Cover the jar and let the lime settle over night. In the morning, draw the water off the top with a syphon, being careful not to move the jar so as to mix again the particles of lime with the water.

Two tablespoonfuls of the lime water is usually sufficient for a pint of milk.

PEPTONIZED MILK FOR INFANTS.--One gill of cows' milk, fresh and unskimmed; one gill of pure water; two tablespoonfuls of rich, sweet cream; two hundred grains of milk sugar, one and one fourth grains of _extractum pancreatis_; four grains of sodium bicarbonate. Put the above in a clean nursing bottle, and place the bottle in water so warm that the whole hand cannot be held in it longer for one minute without pain.

Keep the milk at this temperature for exactly twenty minutes. Prepare fresh just before using.

BEEF-TEA, BROTHS, ETC.

Beef tea and meat broths are by no means so useful as foods for the sick as is generally supposed. The late Dr. Austin Flint used to say of these foods, that "the valuation by most persons outside of the medical profession, and by many within it, of beef tea or its a.n.a.logues, the various solutions, most of the extracts, and the expressed juice of meat, is a delusion and a snare which has led to the loss of many lives by starvation.

"The quant.i.ty of nutritive material in these preparations is insignificant or nil, and it is vastly important that they should be reckoned as of little or no value, except as indirectly conducive to nutrition by acting as stimulants for the secretion of the digestive fluids, or as vehicles for the introduction of the nutritive substances.

Furthermore, it is to be considered that water and pressure not only fail to extract the alimentary principles of meat, but that the excrement.i.tious principles, or the products of destructive a.s.similation, _are_ thereby extracted."

Vegetable broths prepared from grains and legumes possess a much higher nutritive value, while they lack the objectionable features of meat broths.

_RECIPES._

BEEF EXTRACT.--Take a pound of lean beef, cut it up into small dice, and put into a gla.s.s fruit jar. Screw on the cover tightly, put the jar into a vessel filled with cold water to a depth sufficient to come to the top of contents of the jar, and set over a slow fire. As soon as the water boils, set where it will keep just boiling, but no more; and cook for an hour or an hour and a quarter. Then strain, season, and serve. If preferred, a double boiler may be used for the preparation of the extract.

BEEF JUICE.--Cut a thick slice of round steak, trim off every particle of fat, and broil it over a clear fire just long enough to heat it throughout. Next gash it in many places with a sharp knife, and with the aid of a beef-juice press or lemon squeezer, press out all the juice into a bowl set in hot water, salt but very slightly, remove all globules of fat, and serve. This may also be frozen and given the patient in small lumps, if so ordered.

BEEF TEA.--Take a pound of fresh, lean, juicy beef of good flavor,--the top of the round and the back and middle of the rump are the best portions for the purpose,--from which all fat, bones, and sinews have been carefully removed; cut into pieces a quarter of an inch square, or grind in a sausage-cutter. Add a quart of cold water, and put into a clean double boiler. Place over the fire, and heat very slowly, carefully removing all sc.u.m as it rises. Allow it to cook gently for two or three hours, or until the water has been reduced one half. Strain, and put away to cool. Before using, remove all fat from the surface, and season. In reheating, a good way is to place a quant.i.ty in a cup, and set the cup into hot water until the tea is sufficiently hot. This prevents waste, and if the patient is not ready for the tea, it can be easily kept hot.

BEEF TEA AND EGGS.--Beat the yolk of an egg thoroughly in a teacup and fill the cup with boiling beef tea, stirring all the while. Season with a little salt if desired.

BEEF BROTH AND OATMEAL.--Rub two tablespoonfuls of oatmeal smooth in an equal quant.i.ty of cold water, and stir into a quart of boiling beef broth. Cook in a double broiler for two hours, strain, and season with salt and a little cream if allowed. Or, thin well-cooked oatmeal mush with beef-tea; strain, reheat, season, and serve.

BOTTLED BEEF TEA.--Cut two pounds of round steak into small dice, rejecting all skin and fat. Put it into a gla.s.s fruit jar with one cup of cold water. Cover the can sufficiently tight to prevent any water from boiling in, and place it on a wisp of straw or a m.u.f.fin ring in a kettle of cold water. Heat very gradually, and keep it just below the boiling point for two or more hours; or, place the can in a deep dish of hot water, and cook in a moderate oven for three hours. Allow the meat to cook thus four or five hours, or until it appears white, by which time it will have discharged all its juice. Turn the liquor off, strain through a piece of muslin or cheese cloth laid in a colander, and cool; then if any fat has been left, it will harden on the top, and can be removed. When needed for use, reheat, season, and serve.

CHICKEN BROTH.--Take a well dressed, plump spring chicken, cut it into half-inch pieces, cracking well all the bones; add cold water,--a quart to the pound of meat and bones,--and cook the same as beef-tea.

Allow the broth to cool before using, and carefully skim off all particles of fat before reheating. If allowed, a tablespoonful of steamed rice may be added to the broth, or a well-beaten egg may be stirred in while hot just before serving. Heat until the whole becomes thickened, but do not boil.

If preferred, the broth may be prepared by using only the white portion of the chicken in connection with lean beef. This is liked better by some to whom the strong flavor of the chicken is not pleasant. Or, prepare equal quant.i.ty of rich milk, season with salt, reheat, and serve. The broth may be flavored with celery if allowed.