Ingredients
- a piece of meat
- 32 examination of meat fibre
- 33 there is also a proteid called soluble albumen
Directions
Why cook. And first — why do we cook it at all? In the animal as well as in the vegetable world some foods are all ready for our digestion, as milk. Raw eggs too, are perfectly digestible and are often given to invalids. We hear, of "Raw meat cures," and it has been found that tender and juicy raw meat, if chopped fine to break the connective tissue, is well digested.
But raw meat does not taste good to most of us, while the delicious flavor and odor of a broiled steak make it very acceptable to the palate, and we must believe to the stomach also. We "bring out the flavor," as we say, by cooking; what else do we do? Let us examine for a moment a piece of meat with structure of reference to the effect heat has upon it.
meat. The red part is made up of, first, very
tiny sausage-like bags, or muscle fibres as they are called, and in these is contained the precious proteid matter, flavors and salts all mixed together with water into a sort of jelly; second, these muscle fibres are bound together by strands of connective tissue, as that white stringy mass is called, in which the fat and blood vessels are lodged; this is also of food value, but inferior to the fibres. Third, dissolved in the juices floating between the fibres and strands,
Examination of Meat Fibre. 33
there is also a proteid called soluble albumen. The little bags of proteid, when we can get at them, are as digestible in our stomachs as is the white of egg, though, like the egg again, their flavor is improved by slight cooking. But, as we have seen, they are imprisoned in the connective tissue, somewhat, we may say, as are the starch grains of the potato in the cellulose. Softening connec- This connective tissue we can soft-
tive tissue, en by heat, thereby turning it into a sort of gelatine, but unfortunately, unless the meat is very tender, this requires a longer application of heat than is needed to cook the delicate albumen all full of flavors too easily lost. To soften the connect- ive tissue without overcooking the albumen, is one of the problems of meat cookery.
The next question is, how do our methods of cook- ing meet these requirements?