Cook's Encyclopaedia

by Tom Stobart

  The crop is joined to the gullet and is the thin bag at the base of the throat. The crop lies just under the skin; it may be freed by blunt dissection with the fingers, then severed from the rest of the gullet where it passes into the main body cavity. There is no use for the crop. Discard it.

  The vent. Birds have a common vent situated beneath the tail stump or parson’s (or pope’s) nose. Make a slit below the vent (in fact above it, because you will have the bird breast upper-most); I always enlarge the slit by snipping right round the vent and freeing it entirely. Put two fingers inside the bird and free the viscera from the cavity walls by blunt dissection. When they are free, gently pull out all the guts – first the gizzard, then the liver, and finally the heart and remains of the gullet.

  The liver. In most birds (but not, for instance, in pigeons), there is a gall bladder. This is a small green sac closely applied to the liver. Locate it and snip it out without breaking it, as the gall inside is intensely bitter. Wash the liver and set it aside.

  The heart. One of the giblets. Separate and wash it.

  The gizzard is a large muscular sac, part of the digestive canal, where the food is ground up with grit. Cut it free from the rest of the guts (which are discarded) and slice carefully into it until the knife feels the surface of the horny lining (there is a gristly lining to be snicked through first). lf this is done properly, the gizzard can now be pulled open and the horny lining separated and discarded as a complete bag with the contents enclosed in it. Wash the gizzard, which usually goes into the stock-pot.

  Other internal organs include the lungs, which are spongy and closely stuck to the top of the body cavity, the testes or oviducts and ovaries (which may contain partly-formed eggs, sometimes used in cooking) and the kidneys. They can be left in or not, according to preference. Rinse out the cavity (and dry it) only if necessary.

  Skin. To skin a chicken, cut through the skin along the breastbone and, with a knife, free it from the muscles underneath. Using fingers as instruments for blunt dissection, free the skin at the sides of the breast and around the base of the thigh. Pull the skin inside out over the whole leg. When one leg is completely skinned, do the same for the other. Now get the fingers under the skin and push them right across the back to the other side. Run the fingers along, tearing the skin free up to the parson’s nose. Cut off the nose and skin it in one stroke of the knife. Now pull the skin forwards, blunt dissecting with the fingers around the base of the wings and up to the neck. Pull the skin off, inside out, over the base of the wings. It will tear but do not bother, as the skin on the wings is almost impossible to remove entirely.

  [Drawing – French: vider German: ausnehmen Italian: estrarre Spanish: destripar]

  DRAWN BUTTER. In America, this is simply *clarified butter. In Britain, melted butter sauce is thickened with flour, drawn butter is melted butter to which either water or vinegar has been added and which is then beaten until it is thick. Or, as Elizabeth David says in Spices, Salt and Aromatics in the English Kitchen (Grub Street), it can simply be melted butter.

  DREDGING. Sprinkling heavily with sugar or flour – more than a light sprinkling or dusting and less than a coating.

  DRESSING. See salad dressing.

  DRIED BEAN. See kidney bean.

  DRIED MEAT. Many countries have ancient types of dried meat. *Drying has a preservative action because spoilage organisms cannot multiply without water. Salting, *smoking and even spicing are adjuncts. *Dry-salting in particular works by extracting water from meat, as well as through the preservative action of the salt. Equally, drying is essential for hams and sausages which are mainly preserved by salt, saltpetre and smoke. lt is difficult (and pointless) to try to draw any line between hams and dried meats except one of convenience. However, in recent years, the introduction of scientific methods of desiccation under reduced pressure, freeze-drying and so on, have resulted in thoroughly dehydrated foods, which are a logical extension of the same processes, and these are a thing apart.

  The primitive method of drying is hanging strips of lean meat in the sun. Such a product is the dendang of South East Asia, made of buffalo or game. In Africa, I have often seen strips of game meat hung to dry in the smoke of the camp fire (which I suspect was how smoking meat was discovered, not as is usually claimed, through hanging it in the roofs of caves with their damp and stagnant air).The camp-fire smoke exerts a preservative action, but, perhaps even more important, it keeps away flies which would otherwise lay their eggs on the meat and walk about on it with their filthy, contaminated feet.

  The best-known dried meats include the *biltong of South Africa, the tassajo or charqui of Spanish America, the more sophisticated *bundnerfleish of the Grisons in Switzerland and the *bresaola from just over the border in the Adda valley region (Valtellina) of northern Italy. Beef is the meat most commonly dried, plus game in the jungle, sheep (the chalona of Latin America and also a horrible dried mutton in Tibet), goat, and even dolphin meat (musciame) in Sardinia and on the Ligurian coast of Italy.

  DRIPPING. The fat that dripped from roasting joints, in the days when meat really had fat on it, was called dripping. When cold and solidified, some brown meat jelly was usually trapped and preserved under the fat. When the fat (especially of beef dripping) was mixed with the jelly, salted, and spread on toast, it used to be a standard – and delicious – appetite stopper for farm workers and children at tea time on raw evenings in winter or after skating. Dripping was also commonly clarified and used as a cooking fat. In that case, the distinction between dripping and rendered fat is mainly one of usage. Chicken fat, so much a part of Jewish cooking, is not called ‘chicken dripping’.

  [Dripping – French: graisse de rôti German: Bratenfett, Schmalz Italian: grasso d’arrosto Spanish: pringue]

  DRUMSTICK. Not just the lower part of the legs of chickens, turkeys or other fowl, but also the name of a tree, Moringa oleifera, which is used as a vegetable. lt is also called horseradish tree (because its roots taste like horseradish and are used as a flavouring) and ben tree (the seeds – ben nuts – give oil of ben which is used commercially). It is a native of India, but is planted in southern parts of the US, and has gone wild in the West Indies. The drumstick tree is important in Indian cooking, where the flowers, leaves and even the twigs are cooked. The leaves are pounded with onion and sour pomegranate seeds to make a chutney. Most important of all are the unripe pods, which are long (up to 0.5 m or 19 in) and though often rather fibrous, have a delicious taste (sometimes compared with asparagus). Particularly in Madras and Bengal, they are often used in vegetarian curries to which they give an incomparable, almost meaty flavour. Drumsticks can occasionally be found in Britain in shops which specialize in Indian foods, or may be acquired locally in Florida and southern California.

  DRYING is the oldest method of preserving food, and in its modern form of dehydration is of great industrial importance. It works because dry food is not spoiled by yeasts, moulds and bacteria – or even by enzymes – as long as the amount of water left in it is not enough to support life processes. Since micro-organisms are not necessarily killed by drying, dried foods which get damp spoil very quickly; dry, though, they will keep for long periods. Even such highly perishable items as fish and shellfish can be preserved by natural drying.

  Drying depends on relative humidity, the quantity of water vapour in the air in relation to the amount it will hold. But as the amount of water the air will hold increases with temperature, warming air drops the relative humidity, not by removing water vapour but by increasing the quantity that the air can potentially hold. That is why, even on the dampest day, things will dry in a low oven or in an airing cupboard.

  In deserts, the relative humidity is often naturally low, so drying is easy, even in the shade, but on humid tropical beaches the relative humidity is often very high, in spite of the heat, and the drying of shrimps, fish or octopus must be done in the sun – which raises the temperature. In such conditions, rapid drying is necessary to forest
all decomposition. Even so, the products – Bombay duck is typical – develop a gamey flavour. (In Arctic regions, fish may be laid on rocks or hung in rigging to dry slowly, as in the preparation of stockfish.) Sun-drying is not the method for most foods. True, the ultra-violet rays help kill surface bacteria, but they also increase the effects of oxygen and so tend to destroy colour and flavour. Drying in the shade is therefore usually preferable if low relative humidity makes it possible.

  A breeze helps drying because it continually changes the air, in stagnant conditions, the air is quickly saturated with moisture from the objects that are drying. Reduced pressure also promotes drying – at high altitudes, evaporation directly from ice produces the strange pinnacled glaciers around Mount Everest. Cold, in itself, does not prevent drying.

  Dried food is convenient because it is light in weight and takes up little space. With modern high-speed techniques such as drying under reduced pressure, spray drying and freeze drying, the end products are often almost indistinguishable from those made with fresh ingredients. However, dried foods usually need to be soaked before use, and if this is not properly done the results may be unsatisfactory. Over-soaking can lead to decomposition, and living products, such as pulses, should not be soaked if they can be cooked without it.

  The simplest dried foods are grain, pulses and nuts, all of which require very little drying. Fruit mostly dries well, although large species like apples need to be sliced. Some fruit discolours when cut and needs to be treated chemically if appearance is important. Vegetables must be blanched before drying. Drying fish, meat, eggs and milk is normally a commercial undertaking (see dried meat).

  Drying fruit. Fruit, provided it is not too watery, can be dried in the sun (as tomatoes are in southern Italy). Figs need no treatment, other than gentle squashing, but apricots must be split and stoned, while apples and pears have to be peeled, cored and cut in rings or pieces about 0.5 cm (¼ in) thick. To keep them from going brown, soak them briefly (10 minutes) in a solution of one *Campden tablet per 100 ml (3½ fl oz) water before spreading them out on mats or muslin trays to dry. The time taken will depend on the type of fruit and the amount of sun, as well as on the relative humidity. Naturally, the trays should be taken in or covered at night or when there is a possibility of rain.

  More certain results are obtained by drying in ovens or in special driers in which everything is under control. A cool oven, with the door ajar for ventilation, is difficult to regulate exactly. Driers can be bought and are not difficult to construct, the requirements being an easily-controlled source of heat and a means of creating ventilation.

  [Drying – French: sécher German: trocknen Italian: seccare Spanish: secar]

  DRY-SALTING, curing meat by salting and drying, involves rubbing the surface with mixtures of salt, sugar and saltpetre, so there is more handwork than when curing in brine, but the dry-salting cure penetrates more slowly and produces a better flavour. Ham, bacon and other cured meats can be produced by brining (see brine), by dry-salting or by a mixture of both. Dry-salting, though, is used for the most expensive products. The delicious Cumberland hams, for instance, which were cured in every farm and provided the fabled ham and egg teas in the Lake District, were dry-salted. The following (given merely as an example) is from Farmhouse Fare, a splendid collection of country recipes first published by The Farmer’s Weekly in 1946.

  Cumberland Cure

  For a 125 kg (20 stone) pig, you will need 225 g (½ lb) saltpetre, 9.5 kg (1½ stone) salt – preferably Cheshire Block Salt – and 450 g (1 lb) brown sugar. Lay the hams, flitches and shoulders on a stone slab, with the rind to the top. Rub salt into the rind until moisture forms. Turn it over, take out all the blood veins and sprinkle all over with 225 g (½ Ib) saltpetre and 450 g (1 lb) brown sugar (more so about the bones and veins), then cover with salt. Leave it a day; when the salt will have moistened. Cover again with salt, and do so each day for 3-4 days. Take out the flitches at the end of 14 days, the shoulders and hams at the end of 21 days. Wash all pieces with a cloth dipped in lukewarm water and hang them to dry. Curing time from November to March. (From Mrs. T. Fox, Cumberland).

  When salt is rubbed dry on meat, there can be no penetration by salt until some of it has dissolved in liquid extracted from the tissues. From then on, as water flows out of the meat, the salt solution diffuses in, a process that takes place rather slowly. Very finely ground salt (or sugar) is never recommended for curing because it sops up liquid like blotting paper, thus increasing the rate at which the meat loses water while slowing down the penetration of the salt. In dry-salting, the greatest care must be taken to see that all pockets in the meat and places near the bones are in contact with salt and saltpetre, as they may otherwise become centres of putrefaction.

  DUBLIN BAY PRAWN. See scampi.

  DUCK. Like geese and swans, ducks belong to the family Anatidae. Wild ducks are found all over the world, and some of the many species are excellent to eat, while others are horrible. Within a species, palatability also depends on the time of year and on the duck’s age and diet. Almost all the domesticated ducks have been derived from the mallard, which is widely distributed throughout the world, but ducks have been domesticated for so long that breeding has changed them enormously from their original form, as they have been selected for special characteristics. (For instance, Indian Runners and Khaki Campbells were bred for laying.) Domesticating ducklings does not take much effort. They don’t even need to be on water, but they appreciate a trough or bucket of water in which they can wash their beaks and heads. Ducks have been eaten in Europe and China for many thousands of years. The Greeks and the Romans ate them (gourmets only the breasts and brains) and, in China, the duck is highly prized. In fact, the trouble the Chinese take with ducks – removing the oil glands in the tail, inflating the animal to separate the skin from the flesh to get a better crackle, or stuffing it with wild mixtures of stir-fried pork, water chestnuts, ginkgo nuts, ham, shrimps and rice wine – makes even pressed Rouen duck seem simple. The Chinese also value ducks for their beauty, especially the Mandarin, which is commonplace today, but was not so a little more than a hundred years ago. The Chinese took, according to a 19th-century naturalist ‘a singular dislike to seeing their birds pass into the hands of Europeans.’ Another writer in the mid-19th century reported: ‘A gentleman very recently wrote from Sydney to China requesting some of these birds sent to him. The reply was that from the present disturbed state of China it would be easier to send him a pair of mandarins than a pair of Mandarin ducks.’ Nevertheless, shortly after that, nine white Peking ducks, which had previously been bred only in the Imperial Palace, arrived in the US, and it is claimed that these are the ancestors of today’s Long Island ducklings. With time, the number of common breeds has reduced to those regarded as best – or most profitable. In Europe and the US, these include:

  Aylesbury is the most important English breed. White, with some similarity to Rouen ducks, Aylesburies put on weight rapidly and have dark, tender and tasty flesh. They run to about 2 kg (4-5 lb) when dressed. The British have a preference for roast duck and green peas, but there are other interesting dishes, such as the excellent boiled duck of North Wales. Many British restaurants go in for a sloppy version of the French Caneton à l’orange, which too often means duck with a dollop of marmalade in the gravy.

  Long Island ducklings of Chinese ancestry are said to be produced in greater numbers than any other breed in the world. They are excellent and run almost to 3 kg (5-6 lb) as ducks, and something under 2 kg (3½-4 lb) as ducklings. In the US, apple sauce is traditional with roast duckling.

  Nantes ducks, famous in France, are smaller than Rouen ducks but have a fine texture and flavour. At 4 months, they are usually a little over 1.5 kg (3½ lb). Nantes ducks, unlike Rouens, are always bled when they are killed. The easiest way to do this is to chop off the head and to hang up the duck by the feet to drain off the blood.

  Rouen ducks from Normandy, are large. They reach about 3 kg (6
lb) in 4 months and are never bled when killed. Instead, they are suffocated or strangled so that they do not lose any blood. This gives a very dark meat and a special taste. Once killed, a Rouen duck must be eaten within 24 hours. The most famous dish is Caneton à Ia rouennaise. While the duck is still warm, the breast must be plucked so that the blood flows into it. In drawing the bird, care is taken to lose as little blood as possible from the duck, and any that does escape is caught in a bowl. The gall bladder is separated from the liver and the liver returned to the cavity. The bird is trussed and roasted on a spit for only 15-30 minutes, depending on its size; it is then skinned. Legs and wings are cut off for separate treatment.

  The thigh bone is removed from the leg, which is then marked with a hot skewer, brushed with melted butter, grilled and, finally, sprinkled with coarse salt. The wing tips are rolled in breadcrumbs and grilled. These are put on the hot serving dish with the breast, pink and sliced, and are covered with a sauce made with Bordeaux wine in which shallots have been simmered. The juices from the carcase are pressed in a special press – although a Mouli will do – and the liver and heart are sieved. Full details of this classic dish are given in that book of marvellous recipes, Les Recettes Secrètes des meilleurs restaurants de France, by Louisette Bertholle (an abridged version in English is Secrets of the Great French Restaurants, published by Sphere).

  The other domesticated species of note apart from the mallard and its descendants is the grotesque-looking Muscovy duck (Cairina moschata), which hails not from Muscovy (Russia) but from South America. It is the favourite table duck in Australia and is also eaten in the US and Britain. The flesh is musky unless the ducks are very young. Because they are so big, their livers are sometimes used to make pâté de foie gras.

  Although ducks are so valued in France, they are much less so in Spain and Italy, where recipes are relatively few. Perhaps one reason is that the French roast duck for rather a short time (as the British do with wild duck) and eat it pink, though not bloody (15 minutes per 450 g / 1 lb is the rule of thumb), whereas Spanish recipes advocate roasting a duck for 2 hours. They also say that the meat is dry and inferior to chicken, which is not surprising. In Italy, the Venetians have several original recipes for stuffed duck (anatra col pien), including in the stuffing veal, sausage, bread soaked in Marsala, bitter-almond biscuits and the inevitable Parmesan cheese, and basting, for example, with wine and rosemary.