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Page 29
Meats will be regarded as essential by the majority, and naturally they
come first in considering food; and beef is taken as the standard, being
identical in composition with the structures of the human body.
BEEF, if properly fed, is in perfection at seven years old. It should then
be a light red on the cut surface, a darker red near the bone, and
slightly marbled with fat. Beef contains, in a hundred parts, nearly
twenty of nitrogen, seventy-two of water, four of fat, and the remainder
in salts of various descriptions. The poorer the quality of the beef, the
more it will waste in cooking; and its appearance before cooking is also
very different from that of the first quality, which, though looking
moist, leaves no stain upon the hand. In poor beef, the watery part seems
to separate from the rest, which lies in a pool of serous bloody fluid.
The gravy from such beef is pale and poor in flavor; while the fat, which
in healthy beef is firm and of a delicate yellow, in the inferior quality
is dark yellow and of rank smell and taste. Beef is firmer in texture and
more satisfying to the stomach than any other form of meat, and is usually
considered more strengthening.
MUTTON is a trifle more digestible, however. A healthy person would not
notice this, the digestive power in health being more than is necessary
for the ordinary meal; but the dyspeptic will soon find that mutton gives
his stomach less work. Its composition is very nearly the same as that of
beef; and both when cooked, either by roasting or boiling, lose about a
third of their substance, and come to us with twenty-seven parts of
nitrogen, fifteen of fat, fifty-four of water, and three of salty matters.
Mountain sheep and cattle have the finest-flavored meat, and are also
richest in nitrogenous matter. The mountain mutton of Virginia and North
Carolina is as famous as the English Southdown; but proper feeding
anywhere will make a new thing of the ordinary beef and mutton. When our
cattle are treated with decent humanity,--not driven days with scant food
and water, and then packed into cars with no food and no water, and driven
at last to slaughter feverish and gasping in anguish that we have no right
to permit for one moment,--we may expect tender, wholesome, well-flavored
meat. It is astonishing that under present conditions it can be as good as
it is.
In well-fed animals, the fat forms about a third of the weight, the
largest part being in the loin. In mutton, one-half is fat; in pork,
three-quarters; while poultry and game have very little.
The amount of bone varies very greatly. The loin and upper part of the leg
have least; nearly half the entire weight being in the shin, and a tenth
in the carcass. In the best mutton and pork, the bones are smaller, and
fat much greater in proportion to size.
VEAL and LAMB, like all young meats, are much less digestible than beef or
mutton. Both should have very white, clear fat; and if that about the
kidneys is red or discolored, the meat should be rejected. Veal has but
sixteen parts of nitrogenous matter to sixty-three of water, and the bones
contain much more gelatine than is found in older animals. But in all
bones much useful carbon and nitrogen is found; three pounds of bone
yielding as much carbon, and six pounds as much nitrogen, as one pound of
meat. Carefully boiled, this nutriment can all be extracted, and flavored
with vegetables, form the basis of an endless variety of soups.
PORK is of all meats the most difficult to digest, containing as it does
so large a proportion of fat. In a hundred parts of the meat, only nine of
nitrogen are found, fat being forty-eight and water thirty-nine, with but
two of salty matters. Bacon properly cured is much more digestible than
pork, the smoke giving it certain qualities not existing in uncured pork.
No food has yet been found which can take its place for army and navy use
or in pioneering. Beef when salted or smoked loses much of its virtue,
and eight ounces of fat pork will give nearly three times as much carbon
or heat-food as the same amount of beef; but its use is chiefly for the
laborer, and it should have only occasional place in the dietary of
sedentary persons.
The pig is liable to many most unpleasant diseases, measles and trichina
spiralis being the most fatal to the eaters of meat thus affected; but the
last--a small animalcule of deadly effect if taken alive into the human
stomach, as is done in eating raw ham or sausage--becomes harmless if the
same meat is long and thoroughly boiled. Never be tempted into eating raw
ham or sausage; and in using pork in any form, try to have some knowledge
of the pig. A clean, well-fed pig in a well-kept stye is a wonderfully
different object from the hideous beast grunting its way in many a
Southern or Western town, feeding on offal and sewage, and rolling in
filth. Such meat is unfit for human consumption, and the eating of it
insures disease.
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