The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-09-28 00:00:00

CHINESE BIBLIOGRAPHICAL DIS-
COVERIES. •

Count Edouard do Mallijay, an accomplished Sino-
logue, has lately made some interesting discoveries
among the Chincse manuscripts and books preserved in
the Royal Library at Stockholm It was rather a sur-
prise to find in this remote corner of the world the re-
markable edict issued in 1716 by the Emperor Kong-
Hi, a translation of which, authenticated by their
own signatures, was sent to Europe by the Jesuits Par-
renin, Stumpf, Bandini, &c., in order to explain the
grounds (1 the celebrated- quarrel between themselves
and the Dominicans concerning the alleged idolatrous
character of certain native ceremonial practices. The
Jesuits, as usual, were in favour of a toleration which
savoured of "economy ;" but the Dominicans, with
the unyielding sternness befitting the brethren of the
Inquisition, pressed for a vigorous discipline of un-
ambiguous orthodoxy, such as was put in force against
the Moriscoes. It was alleged at the time that the
document sent over by the Jesuits from China was a
forgery, inasmuch as no such edict had been really
issued. As a fact, the original Chinese document
has now, for the first time, been seen by Count de
Malli j ay. It is a placard printed in beautiful red charac-
ters, and the Count is having a copy made as near to
a facsimile as possible. He has also found in the
library six Chinese manuscript lexicons compiled by
various Jesuits. The most remarkable of these is one
containing 11,856 characters, purporting to have been
prepared by Ba.silio de Glemona. The Count says a
manuscript copy of this exists in the Vatican Library,
and that it is substantially a duplicate of the dictionary
printed in folio at Paris in 1813 under the name of
Degnigne. He also found a Latin-Chinese Dictionary
of about 14,000 words, compiled by Father Julian
Placidus Hervien ; but its origin seems to be quite
obscure and uncertain.

THE "REASON WHY" IN PLAIN

COOKERY,

Why ought you to put a leg of mutton into boiling
water? Why ought you to put meat for soup into cold
water? Why does the souffl6 rise? Cooks, and good
ones too, of ten know facts but not reasons; they con-
sequently are limited to a certain number of recipes
which they have learnt by heart, but are quite in-
capable of either invention or imitation. A good
cook, with a good palate, after seeing and tasting a
dieh, ought to be able to make one, if not exactly like
it, yet near enough to pass for It; but I Ler the
faculty is, to say the least, rare. If we understood
more than we do the principles on which cooking
depends, the fact of being able to make one dish,
combined with knowing the reasons for the result,
would often lead to our being able to make a
large variety of similar dishes, which a very
Blight inventive talent would enable us to vary so
much in flavour, that instead of knowing one receipt we
should know twenty. it ie evident that in all cooking
one of two great principles must constantly be brought
into play. One, to keep the flavour in; another, to
get the flavour out. Let us for one moment contrast
boiling a leg of mutton, and making good mutton broth.
It is evident that, in the one case, as we eat the
mutton, our endeavour should be to keep as much
flavour in the meat aa possible; in the second place,
as what we want is the broth' our endeavour should be
to leave as little flavour in the mutton as possible.
Now there are many persons who positively proceed to
prepare both almost the same way. There is a certain
principle, or rather fact, which may be called a chemical
fact, and that is, that albumen coagulates and becomes
hard at boiling-point. This very important fact should
never be lost sight of in cooking meat, for it should
be remembered that meat largely consists of albumen.
First, then, the leg of mutton. Place the leg of mut-
ton in boiling water, this will take the water off the
boil; let the saucepan remain on the fire till the water
boils up again, then remove the saucepan off the fire
till the water gets nearly lukewarm, then put the
saucepan on the tire again, and let it simmer, not boil,
very gentle till the leg of mutton is done. The time of
course varies with the size, but one about 91bs. should
take about two hours and a half. Next let us inquire,
Why did we do this? The lee of mutton thus placed in
boiling water has a rim round the edge hardened by
contact with this boiling water, which causes the albu-
men to coagulate. Were we to leave the leg to
actually boil for long, the whole would become
hardened, and consequently the mutton would
be tough; but by removing ties saucepan off the fire,
we get the mutton to cook, surrounded as it is by a
thin rim of hard meat, not thicker than a thin six
pence, which hard rim keeps in the gravy and flavour.

Now in making mutton broth we must proo;ed on
exactly contrary principles, Our object is to extract
all the flavour we possibly can from the meat and get
it into the broth, we therefore cut up the meat into
small pieces, and put them into cold water, and let
them simmer as long as possible without boiling; by
this means all the juices of the meat gradually get ex-
tracted, and the solid part of the meat that is left,
after the broth is well clrain.cl off, contains scarcely
any nourishment at all, Cassell's Dictionary of
Cookery.