Cook's Encyclopaedia

by Tom Stobart

  [Camel – French: chameau German: Kamel

  Italian: cammello Spanish: camello]

  CAMOMILE or chamomile. Camomile tea is a well-known calming drink. It can be made from either of two herbs, both belonging to the composite family and claimed to be equally effective. They are the Sweet camomile (Chamaemelum nobile), a native of England, Western Europe and North Africa, and the Wild camomile or German camomile (Matricaria recutica), which grows wild over much of Europe, including Britain, and has been introduced in North America and Australia. Camomile can be bought in packets, dried and ready for making into camomile tea, which is brewed by pouring boiling water on the dried herb and infusing like any other tea.

  [Camomile – French: camomille German: Kamille Italian: camomilla Spanish: camomila, manzanilla]

  CAMPDEN TABLETS are a handy form of sodium metabisulphite (Na2S2O5) and were originally made up for use in preserving fruit. Each tablet contains 0.44 g (7 grains) of sodium metabisulphite in a sugar base. Campden tablets are now much used by home wine and beer makers. The metabisulphites of both sodium and potassium are convenient sources of sulphur dioxide, very low concentrations of which will inhibit or destroy micro-organisms. Sulphite, as the winemakers call these compounds, is much less toxic to wine yeasts, some of which are actually encouraged if there are minute quantities of it still around. In any case, the action of the metabisulphite is largely finished after 24 hours, which is normally recommended as the time that should elapse before the wine yeast is added.

  In wine must and other fruit juices, 50 ppm (parts per million) of sulphur dioxide will suffice to kill undesirable bacteria and stop the action of yeasts and moulds. If over-ripe or damaged fruit has been used, 100 or even 150 ppm of sulphur dioxide will be needed. These three concentrations are achieved by adding one, two or three Campden tablets for every 4.5 It (1 gallon) of liquid – one Campden tablet per gallon gives 50 ppm of sulphur dioxide.

  If you are going to have much use for metabisulphite, you will find it a lot cheaper and no less convenient to buy sodium (or potassium) metabisulphite from the chemist and make up your own stock solution. You can do this by completely dissolving 100 g metabisulphite in 500 ml hot water (or 4 oz in 1 pt) and diluting the solution to 1 It (or 2 pt) with cold water. This 10% metabisulphite solution will keep for 4-6 months in a well stoppered bottle. This solution is said to contain 5% by weight of available sulphur dioxide, but, more important, 5 ml (1 teaspoon) of it is equivalent to one Campden tablet.

  This 10% stock solution is also invaluable for sterilizing glass jars, bottles and equipment. If you keep a separate bottle of the solution for rinsing equipment, you can use it over and over again. The equipment should be cleaned before the sterilizing solution is poured in and swirled around; it should then drain for half an hour before use (or be swilled out with boiled water).

  As the stock solution gives off a choking smell of sulphur dioxide, avoid working with it in very confined or ill-ventilated places. Weaker stock solutions, right down to 1%, have been recommended as a less smelly alternative, but they do not have the keeping qualities of the 10% solution. Their effectiveness can be increased by the addition of citric or tartaric acid, but the resulting brew will last for only a few days. One such recipe uses 2 Campden tablets (or 10 ml or 2 teaspoons stock solution) plus ¼ teaspoon citric acid in 500 ml (1 pt) water. This is an effective rinsing solution but should be thrown away after use.

  Metabisulphites are something of a panacea for the home winemaker. Not only are they used to treat the must and sterilize the equipment, but they are also added to the wine at later stages to discourage new yeast growths and prevent browning that may be caused by the absorption of oxygen. The latter action depends on another quality of a metabisulphite – it is a reducing agent, which is to say that it combines eagerly with any free oxygen. For this reason, it will also prevent cut apples from going brown. The main uses of metabisulphites in the kitchen are in *bottling, *drying and making *candied fruit.

  CANDIED FRUIT, fruit confit, crystallized fruit and preserved fruit. Candied fruit is fruit or pieces of fruit (e.g. candied peel) impregnated with sugar (which acts as a preservative), then washed and dried on the surface. The surface is covered with crystalline sugar in crystallized fruits; a glazed surface characterizes fruit confit (e.g. glace cherries and marrons glacés). Preserved fruit (e.g. preserved ginger), will be packed in a dense syrup, unless otherwise stated.

  Essentially, the technique leading up to all of these products is the same. The fruits (and certain vegetables, like carrots, as well as angelica stalks) are prepared – peeled, cored, scraped, cut in suitable sized pieces, etc. A few items, like marrow, demand special techniques, such as an initial soaking of the pieces in *lime water overnight, and fruit which discolours when cut up must be kept in water in which a *Campden tablet has been dissolved or which has been laced with ascorbic acid (*vitamin C) or lemon juice. After preparation, the fruit must be boiled until it is just tender and, if it is in large pieces, pricked all over with a needle to aid sugar penetration.

  The methods used in preserving fruit to be packed in syrup and to be candied differ in some details. In preserved fruit, some of the juices can flavour the syrup, but in candied fruit, the juices should stay in the fruit. Preserving fruit in syrup is a less critical process; the sugar concentration can be raised fairly rapidly, and the syrup can be made with pure cane sugar. Candying needs more care: the sugar concentration must be raised slowly and (for best results) the sugar should be mixed with glucose.

  Fruit Preserved in Syrup

  Stack the prepared fruit in layers in a container, and cover each layer well with sugar to a total of half the weight of the fruit. After 24 hours, juice will have run from the fruit to make a syrup, usually of about 30-35% sugar. Add more sugar to bring the strength up to 60%.To calculate how much sugar is necessary to do this, you should ideally use a syrup-measuring *hydrometer, but alternatively you may rely on adding the same weight of sugar as used previously.

  Now bring the pot of fruit to the boil and boil it for 4-5 minutes. Leave it to cool and let it stand for 24 hours. Next day, repeat the process, and add more sugar, bringing it up to 68% and do it again the following day, in a final boiling to raise the sugar to 70%. Leave the fruit in this syrup for 4-5 days until it is thoroughly impregnated. It is then ready to be packed into jars, covered with the syrup and sealed to prevent evaporation.

  Candied Fruits

  For candied, crystallized or confit fruit, a sugar mixture of 2 parts cane sugar to 1 part glucose gives better results than pure cane sugar. The glucose stops the fruit going hard. Make a 30% syrup with 300 g (11 oz) sugar mixture per litre (1¾ pt) water, and boil the prepared fruit in it for 2 minutes. Then allow it to cool and leave it for a day or so, during which time the fruit must be kept submerged in the syrup. Repeat the same process every day, adding sugar to increase its strength by no more than 10% each time (and for the very best results only 5%) until a 70% syrup (or thereabouts) is reached. Leave the fruit in this concentrated syrup for a week, so that it becomes completely impregnated with sugar, after which it can be very quickly rinsed in boiling water and dried off on a tray at not more than 48°C (120°F).If the fruit is to be crystallized, do not wash it, but dip it into coarse sugar before drying. For a glacé effect, wash and dry the fruit, then dip it into crack-boiled sugar for a moment or soak it in a dilute (1%) pectin solution and dry it for 2-3 hours at a low temperature (48°C or 119°F).This gives the fruit a shiny glaze.

  Candied peel is the peel of various citrus fruit (oranges, bitter oranges, lemons and citrons) preserved by impregnating with sugar. During the glut seasons of winter and spring, the fruits are cut into two and held in brine until wanted. The salt is then soaked out, and the peel is cooked and soaked in syrups of increasing strengths as described above. Candied peel varies enormously in quality; it may be succulent or hard. These days, it is very often chopped in the factory and sold as mixed peel. Many people who like the tast
e of candied peel do not like the hard bits, which are rather indigestible, and prefer to put peel through the mincer.

  [Candied fruit – French: fruit confit German: kandierte Frucht Italian: frutta candita Spanish: fruta azucarada

  Candied peel – French: zeste confit, zeste d’ltalie German: Zitronat]

  CANDLE NUT. This tropical nut (Aleurites moluccana), a member of the spurge family, is so oily that it can be burned like a candle. Under the name of kemiri or buah keras (kras), it is used in Malay and Indonesian cooking, crushed in soups, ground with other ingredients for saté and curry pastes. When fresh and raw, the nuts are violently purgative, indeed poisonous, but the poison dissipates after they have been kept for some time, and the nuts can be used, often first roasted, in cooking. *Macadamia nuts are recommended as a substitute, as also are the less oily almonds, the latter even being preferred in South East Asia by those who can afford them.

  CANELLINI. See kidney bean.

  CANNING. Canned foods, something we take for granted, are derived from the heat-sterilized bottled foods, which are supposed to have been invented by Nicolas Appert early in the 19th century to help feed Napoleon’s armies. Before canned food could replace bottled food, tin plate had to be invented. Today, canning is a huge industry, and since certain varieties of fruit and vegetable respond to canning better than others, huge acreages of produce are grown near the canneries by farmers working under contract and often using seeds or plants developed and provided by the canners. Crops have also to be harvested at exactly the right stage, which demands close collaboration between farmer and canner.

  Canning is mainly done in containers made of plain or lacquered tin plate. Although the materials used pass under human inspection, the processes of selection, grading and cleaning in large factories are done almost entirely by machinery. So also is the filling of the cans with the food.The cans are usually exhausted and sealed before sterilization, in contrast to the old methods in which the food was sealed in the container immediately after heating, to remove as much air as possible. Fruit is usually sterilized at a temperature near boiling, 94°C (202°F) or thereabouts, depending on the product, and vegetables at well over boiling temperature in an autoclave for 20-45 minutes, which is necessary to ensure the destruction of all bacterial spores that could cause spoilage or health risks.

  There is little point in home canning and there are strong reasons against it. Where canning or bottling acid fruit may be safe, the home canning of vegetables is not, unless the person doing it is very careful, very expert and very well equipped. Statistics show that most outbreaks of botulism (see poisoning) can be traced to home canning. As this disease is so often fatal, do-it-yourself canning is best forgotten. An expert from the Metal Box Company whom I consulted, advised: ‘Don’t do it!’ However, in spite of a very few highly publicized scares, food poisoning from commercially-canned foods is so rare as to be negligible, because of the scientific control which has been perfected over the years by engineers and scientists in the canners’ laboratories.

  [Canning – French: mettre en boite German: eindosen Italian: conservare in iscatola Spanish: enlatar]

  CAN SIZES. See weights and measures.

  CANTALOUPE. See melon.

  CAPE BUTTERCUP. See yam (Oxalis tubers).

  CAPE GOOSEBERRY. See physalis fruit.

  CAPER. Capers (Capparis spinosa, spiny; Capperis inermis, spineless), which grow wild all round the Mediterranean, have been used as a condiment for thousands of years. Plants may often be seen hanging down over old walls and growing on building sites or on the rough ground at the edges of roads. They can be recognized by their flowers, which look a little like large wild roses with tassels of long purple stamens. Caper flowers have a very short life – they open in the morning and are wilted by lunch time – but if a spray is cut and put in water in the house, the unopened buds will burst into flower – and last for a day or more. Capers are the small, immature flower buds (the cucumber-like fruit, which have annoying small seeds inside, are sometimes pickled in country areas). Raw capers have none of the interesting goaty taste, which develops only when they have been pickled.

  Although capers are very easy to grow in a dry warm climate, they are expensive because of the great amount of hand work necessary in picking them. This is especially the case with the best capers, which are made from the very small hard buds. The plant has to be picked over almost every morning, just as the buds reach the proper size, and it takes a long time to gather a worthwhile quantity. Raw capers may sometimes be bought in Mediterranean country markets, or you can pick your own, as I do each year.

  The capers should be washed well to remove dust and then spread out in the sun to dry and wilt for a day. They can then be put into jars of strongly salted wine vinegar. The best pickled capers (non-pareilles) can be bought packed in bottles, and their quality is shown by the price; but in the countries around the Mediterranean where capers are an everyday ingredient, they are also sold in the markets, loose, by weight. Some are even dry-salted (but are not very nice). In either case, the loose capers should be covered with well-salted vinegar at home if they are not to be used within a few days. Capers should always be kept covered with liquid, as otherwise they develop a nasty taste. A well-known use of capers is in the caper sauce which is eaten with boiled mutton, but they also go into many other sauces. Grated lemon rind and garlic combine exceptionally well with capers, and I always use them together. Capers are used with fish, in salads and hors d’oeuvre, for decoration, and for special accent (as in liptauer cheese). Addicts eat them on bread and butter when nobody is looking.

  Other buds and seeds which look superficially rather like capers are sometimes advocated as substitutes, particularly the caper spurge (Euphorbia lathyrus) and the young fruit of the nasturtium. Spurges are best avoided, as most species are poisonous. Pickled nasturtium fruit have a very interesting mustard overtone and may be regarded as a condiment in their own right. They are wilted and put into salted vinegar in exactly the same way as capers.

  [Caper – French: câpre German: Koper Italian: cappero Spanish: alcaparra]

  CAPERCAILLIE. See grouse.

  CAPOCOLLA. See coppa.

  CAPSICUM. A genus of plants in the Solanaceae, the potato, tomato and nightshade family, which are native to tropical America and the West Indies. The two gastronomically important species are *chilli pepper (Capsicum frutescens), which is also sold dried and ground as red pepper or cayenne pepper, and *sweet pepper (Capsicum annuum), which, dried and ground, forms the spices, *paprika and *pimentón.

  [Capsicum – French: capsicum German: spanischer Pfeffer Italian: peperone Spanish: pimiento]

  CARAMBOLA (Averrhoa carambola). A tropical fruit belonging to the Oxalidaceae, the wood-sorrel family, and native to lndonesia. The fruits, borne on a small tree, are a delicate, translucent yellow or greenish-yellow, and 7-12 cm (3-5 in) long, with a characteristic lobed shape. When sweet, this can be a nice juicy fruit; it is popular in China. It is used in fruit salads, jellies, drinks and preserves. When sour, it makes a useful souring agent and is used in South India, where it is a substitute for tamarind. The carambola prefers a hot humid climate. The Indian name is kamrakh.

  CARAMEL. If sugar is heated through the various stages to hard crack and extra-hard crack, further heating will produce caramel. Caramelization begins when the sugar starts to turn amber, it then goes red-brown and finally black. This occurs at around 180°C (356°F), although, in practice, sugar may begin to caramelize before then, during boiling. In the process, sugar breaks down into other substances and a characteristic flavour develops.

  Caramel to be used as a flavouring or to coat moulds is easily made by heating sugar with a very little water to melt it, then continuing to heat it, watching carefully, until the desired degree of caramelization is reached. Over-heating results in burning and a bitter taste. The unwanted caramelization that takes place during jam-making or when boiling sugar for sweets is usually due to local over
-heating on the bottom of the pan, or on the sides where sugar has splashed. It may be prevented by careful stirring to make sure that sugar never sticks to the bottom and by washing down the sides of the pan with a brush dipped in water.

  Caramel also tends to form when sugar is cooked for too long. It is responsible for giving over-cooked jam its brownish colour and poor flavour. As a schoolboy, I used to work at making butterscotch for pocket money. The aim, I was told, was to get it as light coloured as possible, with no hint of a caramel taste. The quicker the temperature could be raced up without burning, the less caramelization there would be, and the paler and more delicate the result. In the end, l became so proficient that my aunt (who kept a rather famous tea shop) was no longer able to sell it. ‘It doesn’t look home-made,’ the customers complained.

  [Caramel – French: caramel German: Karamel Italian: caramella Spanish: caramelo]

  CARAWAY. This spice seed comes from an umbelliferous plant (Carum carvi) which grows wild in many parts of Europe and Asia. The young green leaves of caraway are sometimes used as a green herb and have a flavour somewhere between parsley and dill. However, it is the ripe seeds that are important, particularly in German and Austrian cooking. It lies often unrecognized in the characteristic flavour of Austrian food – with meat as well as in sweet dishes. Caraway seeds are used with cheese, with cabbage, in sauerkraut, sprinkled over roast pork, ground in sausages, with paprika in gulash, and on bread. In Britain, however, caraway seeds are now mainly associated with seed cake, although they were used much more in the past.

  [Caraway – French: carvi, cumin des prés German: Kümmel Italian: carvi, comino dei prati Spanish: alcaravea]

  CARBOHYDRATES get their name because they contain carbon combined with hydrogen and oxygen in the same 2:1 proportion as in water. Among carbohydrates are starch, sugar, glucose, pectin and cellulose. They are synthesized out of carbon dioxide and water by green plants which use the energy from sunlight for the purpose. The process is called photosynthesis. Carbohydrates are used as fuel by animals. Total or almost total removal of carbohydrate from the diet (the basis of the Atkins diet) forces the body to mobilize and use its fat reserves to make its own carbohydrate.