Proper cookery renders good food material more digestible. When scientifically done, cooking changes each of the food elements, apart from fats, in much an equivalent manner as do the digestive juices, and at an equivalent time it breaks up the food by dissolving the soluble portions, so that its elements are more readily acted upon by the digestive fluids. Cookery, however, often fails to achieve the specified end; and therefore the best material is rendered useless and unwholesome by improper preparation.
It is rare to seek out a table, some portion of the food upon which isn't rendered unwholesome either by improper preparatory treatment or by the addition of some deleterious substance. this is often doubtless because the preparation of food being such a commonplace matter, its important relations to health, mind, and body are overlooked, and it's been considered a menial service which could be undertaken with little or no preparation, and without attention to matters aside from those which relate to the pleasure of the attention and therefore the palate. With taste only as a criterion, it's very easy to disguise the results of careless and improper cookery of food by the utilization of flavors and condiments, also on foist off upon the digestive organs all kinds of inferior material, that poor cookery has come to be the rule instead of the exception.
Methods of cooking.
Cookery is that the art of preparing food for the table by dressing, or by the appliance of warmth in some manner. a correct source of warmth having been secured, the subsequent step is to use it to the food in some manner. The principal methods commonly employed are roasting, broiling, baking, boiling, stewing, simmering, steaming, and frying.
Roasting is cooking food in its own juices before a fire. Broiling, or grilling, is cooking by radiant heat. This method is merely adapted to thin pieces of food with a substantial amount of surface. Larger and more compact foods should be roasted or baked. Roasting and broiling are allied in theory. In both, the work is chiefly done by the radiation of warmth directly upon the surface of the food, although some heat is communicated by the recent air surrounding the food. the extreme heat applied to the food soon sears its outer surfaces, and thus prevents the escape of its juices. If care is taken frequently to show the food so that its entire surface is going to be thus acted upon, the inside of the mass is cooked by its own juices.
Baking is that the cooking of food by dry heat during a closed oven. Only foods containing a substantial degree of moisture are adapted for cooking by this method. The hot, dry air which fills the oven is usually thirsting for moisture and can take from every moist substance to which it's accessed a quantity of water proportionate to its degree of warmth. Foods containing but a little amount of moisture, unless protected in some manner from the action of the heated air, or in how furnished with moisture during the cooking process, come from the oven dry, hard, and unpalatable.
Boiling is that the cooking of food during a boiling liquid. Water is that the usual medium employed for this purpose. When water is heated, as its temperature is increased, minute bubbles of air that are dissolved by it are given off. because the temperature rises, bubbles of steam will begin to make at the rock bottom of the vessel. At first, these are going to be condensed as they rise into the cooler water above, causing a simmering sound; but because the heat increases, the bubbles will rise higher and better before collapsing, and during a short time will pass entirely through the water, escaping from its surface, causing more or less agitation, consistent with the rapidity with which they're formed. Water boils when the bubbles thus rise to the surface, and steam is thrown off. The mechanical action of the water is increased by rapid bubbling, but not the heat; and to boil anything violently doesn't expedite the cooking process, save that by the mechanical action of the water the food is broken into smaller pieces, which are for this reason more readily softened. But violent boiling occasions a huge waste of fuel, and by driving away within the steam the volatile and savory elements of the food, renders it much less palatable, if not altogether tasteless. The solvent properties of water are so increased by the warmth that it permeates the food, rendering its hard and hard constituents soft and straightforward of digestion.
The liquids mostly employed within the cooking of foods are water and milk. Water is best fitted to the cooking of most foods, but such farinaceous foods as rice, macaroni, and farina, milk, or a minimum of part milk, is preferable because it adds to their nutritive value. In using milk for cooking purposes, it should be remembered that's denser than water, when heated, fewer steam escapes, and consequently, it boils before does water. Then, too, milk being denser, when it's used alone for cooking, a touch larger quantity of fluid is going to be required than when water is employed.
Steaming, as its name implies, is that the cooking of food by the utilization of steam. There are several ways of steaming, the foremost common of which is by placing the food during a perforated dish over a vessel of boiling water. For foods not needing the solvent powers of water, or which already contain an outsized amount of moisture, this method is preferable to boiling. Another sort of cooking, which is typically termed steaming, is that of placing the food, with or without water, as needed, during a closed vessel which is placed inside another vessel containing boiling water. Such an apparatus is termed a double saucepan. Food cooked in its own juices during a covered dish during a hot oven is usually spoken of as being steamed or smothered.
Stewing is that the prolonged cooking of food during a small quantity of liquid, the temperature of which is simply below the boiling point. Stewing shouldn't be confounded with simmering, which is slow, steady boiling. the right temperature for stewing is most easily secured by the utilization of the double saucepan. The water within the outer vessel boils, while that within the inner vessel doesn't being kept a touch below the temperature of the water from which its heat is obtained, by the constant evaporation at a temperature a touch below the boiling point.
Frying, which is that the cooking of food in hot fat, maybe a method not be recommended Unlike all the opposite food elements, fat is rendered less digestible by cooking. Doubtless, it's for this reason that nature has provided those foods which require the foremost prolonged cooking to suit them to be used with only a little proportion of fat, and it might seem to point that any food to be subjected to a high degree of warmth shouldn't be mixed and compounded largely of fats.
