The morning call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1878-1895, 1891-01-03
HOW TO PREPARE FOOD.
DR.. Steele's Lecture at Cooper
Medical College.
Best Methods of Extracting Nutritious Por-
lions Of Meat - Value of Beef Tea
and Blood as Food.

Last night at Cooper Medical ollege DR..
c. ii. Steele delivered one of the popular
Lane Lectures taking for subject line
Preparation of Animal Food" He said:
1.-The subject of food is certainly impor-
tant, since it comes more directly than any
other affair of humanity into contact with
the daily happiness or misery of every in
dividual. 1t is also a subject which, more
than any other, has been consigned to I'M
merited oblivion. The taste, rather than
the value, of the food is usually the subject
of consideration.
"What is animal food? Besides milk and
its products, every portion Of the animafS
ANATOMY. with the exception OF the solid
parts, as bone, hair. etc, has been utilized
to vary the m0notony of the table The
brain, the tongue, the stomach lin the name
OF trlpe), the heart, the thymus gland or
pancreas (uuder the title of sweetbread), the
liver and kidneys have each their yota-
ries. But the staple article of animal food
is the flesh, which is so much alike in the
birds of the air, the beast of the field and
the fishes of the sea that single general de-
scription would suffice. The value of flesh
as a food-that is, its dgestibility and nour-
Acknowledgements greatly upon its method
of cooking"
DR., Steele stated that there was fluid
substance in the muscular fiber, known as
muscle plasma. Alter death, this muscle %
plasma coagulates and forms two bodies
one solid. called myOsn, and the other
watery, called muscle serum. The muscle
plasma before coagulation) is a fluid of
sirupy cOnsistence. This muscle plasma is
the nourishing part of meat, and when de-
sirable for the invalid is best given alone in
its natural state, before 1t coagulates This
can be accomplished in only one way. I'm
medately after the death of the animal, be-
fore rlgor morris commences, the meat
should be kept III temperature of so (the
freezing point, and cut tranSversely into
thin slices with a cold knife. The frozen
slices are then wrapped in linen and the
plasma pressed out by means of metal
lemon-squeezer, also previously cooled. 1t
should be eaten immediately. In this very
impractcabe method all the nourishng
material of the flesh is obtained, and in its
most dlgestlble form. After the muscle
plasma has been allowed to coagulate into
the solid myosin and liquid serum, cook
ing is required to render it suitable for
digestion.
Having considered the semi-fuid contents
OF the muscular fiber or thread, we will turn
to its walls-the sarcoemma, or the muscle
tube itself. This substance is always solid !
and Is SO strong thai it is ruptured with diff
Guilty. This sarcolemma is solid and re-
mains so even after long boiling in water.
1t Is, however, slowly dissolved by simply
heating 1t in dilute solutions of acids and
alkalies, and in tue digestive fluids of the
body. As meat always contains the neces-
sary proportion of acids or akalies, this sub
stance is sOftened by prolonged cooking in
warm water in such way as to retain the
juices in the meat. If, however, the flesh is
placed in gradually heated water and vio-
lently boiled, so that the salts are absorbed
from the meat by the water, the sarcOlemma
becomes hardened and tough, and the we'll
cooked meat becomes inslpid aud stringy,
Blood would itself seem TO be the ideal food
for nourlahing the living blood in our a.
terieS and veins.
In Paris it is quite the mode for fashion
able ladies and their escorts to revive their
energies by a visit to La Villette and drink
the fresh, warm blood from the cattle, sold
them by the butcher ut 30 confines the
glass. But such blood has no mysterious
life giving power.
Meat contains 20 per cent of albumen, and
blood only 10 per cent, ami is even less
nutritious than ordinary beer.