by Tom Stobart
Hard water is particularly found in chalk, limestone or dolomite areas, and the chemicals responsible for hardness are mainly bicarbonates, sulphates and chlorides of calcium, magnesium, sodium and potassium. (There may also be small amounts of nitrate from mineral sources, but more than 30 parts per million is almost certainly a sign of contamination. When water containing bicarbonates of calcium and magnesium is boiled, the bicarbonates are changed to insoluble carbonates. This produces deposits on pans and furring on kettles. The bicarbonates that can be removed by heating are a source of temporary hardness, as opposed to the permanent hardness caused by the sulphates and chlorides of calcium and magnesium, most commonly by gypsum (calcium sulphate),that stay in solution when the water is boiled. Hard water is not good for making tea or for cooking. Good drinking water should not have more than 500 parts per million of dissolved solids. However, the calcium bicarbonate in hard water is thought to be a source of calcium used by the body.
Safety. It is possible to have water so rich in poisonous elements that it is not safe to drink. You would not happily drink water in old lead or copper mines. Some natural waters contain arsenic and other poisons, are radio-active or are just downright nasty because they contain salt or alkali. Usually, however, the possible problem is sewage contamination. Rivers usually have water that is contaminated with sewage, but may be used to feed reservoirs; even in the 19th century London water was described as ‘very dilute sewage’. Today at least it is purified and chlorinated sewage, but the ingredients can be detected in the taste. In the countries where the banks of streams are used as lavatories or the separation between water mains and sewers is not impeccable, the result can be epidemics of cholera, typhoid and dysentery. Water containing ammonia, nitrites, phosphates or hydrogen sulphide (which gives a smell of rotten eggs) is probably contaminated with organic waste but is not necessarily harmful. Most bacteria in water are harmless saprophytes that live on the organic matter it contains. lt is only when a carrier has added pathogenic organisms (not only bacteria but amoeba and bilharzia as in parts of Africa) that there is trouble. Boiled water is safe (and so therefore is tea); and any tap water that smells of chlorine is drinkable, though it may taste unpleasant. The taste of chlorine can be removed by adding a small pinch of powdered sodium thiosulphate, which is well known to photographers as ‘hypo’ and is easily bought at the chemist. Water-sterilizing tablets containing a chlorine-releasing compound, such as sodium hypochlorite, can also be bought at chemists; they work well so long as instructions are followed to the letter, which is mostly a question of waiting half an hour before drinking the water. If all else fails, water from the hot tap (if it is really hot) can be used, as most pathogenic organisms are fragile and cannot withstand water at temperatures that are too hot to dip your hand in. The best solution of all for travellers who don’t want to go to the American Embassy whenever they would like a drink of water is to buy a water sterilizing filter pump that makes use of a filter candle. The pores of the fitter candle are too small to let bacteria pass, but water can be forced through. In old models, the candles had to be boiled regularly because bacteria were eventually forced through like fat men pushed down a narrow passage, but modern fitter candles are impregnated with colloidal silver which kills trapped bacteria. Parasites which might be in water are even larger. Only viruses can get through a filter candle.
Drinking water. Water makes up 60-70% of the human body, mostly in the cells; there is far less in the blood and other body fluids. Under average conditions, we lose some 2 It (W2 pt) a day mainly in urine, in sweat and through the lungs in breathing. This has to be made good by eating moist foods and by drinking liquids. Although it is possible to fast for weeks and still recover, someone from whom all sources of water have been withdrawn will last 60-70 hours (more in cool moist conditions, less in a dry, hot, windy desert) and will die after the loss of some 20% of body water. And thirst is awful. Anyone who has travelled in deserts knows that there does not seem to be enough water in the whole wide world to stop the craving.
Good table water is clear, colourless and almost tasteless. Unlike boiled water or distilled water, it is not flat because it contains some dissolved air, as can be seen by the bubbles that come out when water is stood for long in a glass. Water should always be on the table at meal-times, especially for weight watchers, as it helps to fill the stomach. lt might be served in a glass jug, which looks clean and attractive, in a silver jug (silver helps to destroy bacteria and is traditional in some places), or in an unglazed earthenware pitcher, which keeps the water cool by evaporation. How many people who bother greatly over the wine bother equally over the water? (The Turks, though, are great connoisseurs of water.) The temperature should be ideally 9-12°C (48-54°F) for European tastes, with an outside range of 7-14°C (45-57°F). Americans prefer water below the 7°C (45°F) which is regarded as the lowest comfortable temperature in Europe, at 5.5°C (42°F), which seems very cold indeed, or even lower. This might be called ice-water, swigged in long draughts, it is not very good for the stomach. However, whatever you do, bad-tasting tap water is not going to taste good just because it is served in a nice jug at the right temperature. The alternative is mineral water.
Mineral water and bottled water. My grandmother was as keen as any European on visiting spas and hydras to have baths and drink the waters everywhere from Harrogate to Bad Homburg. She believed that the French drank mineral water simply because French tap water was full of typhoid. It did not occur to her, or to others of her generation, that they also drank it because it was nice. The mineral waters she drank were medicinal and nasty, while her tap water from the millstone grit of the Peak District in Derbyshire was excellent (water from there is now carbonated and bottled).
The French have 1200 registered springs, of which fifty produce water that is bottled for general consumption. A bottle of mineral water is also a normal part of a meal for many people in Italy, Spain, Germany and other European countries. And now the British are beginning to realise that good water, whether still or gassed, can be delicious. The bottle of San Pellegrino water with dinner on a hot evening in Rome is something to look forward to.
Bottled waters are often divided into table waters, mineral waters (which are slightly medicinal) and medicinal waters, but it will be a matter of opinion where the line will be drawn. Some, such as the waters containing arsenic (La Bourboule and Royat), will never be drunk except on doctor’s advice, and nobody drinks the sulphurous waters of Harrogate and Bath for fun.
At the opposite end of the scale are the very pure waters, such as Evian, the largest-selling water in France, which is still and comes from springs in the French Alps (Haute Savoie), and Perrier, full of natural gas, from Vergèze in the South of France. Malvern water, from Worcestershire in the West of England, is still, pure and very slightly alkaline. San Pellegrino, which comes from springs near Milan, is artificially gassed but is an excellent table water with a very refreshing taste. Solares from near Madrid is a good table water from Spain.
Slightly more mineralized waters are drunk because people like the taste or because of a diet, but are scarcely medicinal in the usual sense. Among them is Vichy Célestins (Célestins, because there are other, openly medicinal Vichy springs) from the Allier valley near Vichy, Central France; it contains a relatively large amount of bicarbonate of soda and enough common salt to give it a salty taste. Others from France are Badoit, which is moderately alkaline and lightly gassed and Contrexéville (Centrex), which is still and also slightly alkaline; it is mildly laxative as it contains some magnesium sulphate (Epsom salts) and is popular with French girls as a diet drink. In Germany, the most famous table water is Apollinaris, a strongly effervescent, very slightly alkaline water, from a spring in the valley of the Ahr in the Rhineland. Seltzer water from Oberselters in Westerwald, also in the Rhineland, is much imitated artificially all over the world, as is Vichy water. Other alkaline German waters are Johannis and Krontal, and optimists take them for hangovers. Do
zens of varieties are reputedly good for ‘flushing out the kidneys’, while others are purgative. Homburg, Marienbad and Vittel contain iron.
Undoubtedly the water you drink has a bearing on your health and may account for variations in medical statistics from area to area. The value of bottled table waters tends to be overstated by the advertising copy that goes with them – the good effect of taking the waters at spas was probably as much due to drinking some water instead of just wine as to anything else.
Water in cooking. Soft water is best for cooking, for making tea, for brines to make pickles, for boiling vegetables and so on. Hard or alkaline water may make cabbage greener, but it destroys vitamins. The cloudiness, due to chalk thrown out on boiling, is unsightly in cold tea, but may be dispelled by acidifying with lemon juice. Certain fountains in Rome have reputations for producing good cooking water, and several chefs I know regard the use of mineral water as one of their ‘secrets’, especially in pastry and pasta. A water softener is helpful in kitchens where there is very hard water.
[Water – French: eau German: Wasser Italian: acqua Spanish: agua]
WATERCRESS. See cress.
WATER CHESTNUT. The common water chestnut (Trapa natans) is a floating water plant with sharply-angled, diamond-shaped, serrated leaves that can be seen in ponds and lakes in southern Europe. The fruits have four woody horns. The meat of the nut inside is floury, and has a pleasant taste. lt is sometimes eaten, usually after the nut has been boiled or roasted. Alternative names are Water caltrops or Jesuits’ bread. A closely allied species, Singhara nut (T. bispinosa), is an important local food in Kashmir, where it is grown in the lakes, while the other species of the genus, the Chinese ling (T. bicomis) has horns like a water buffalo and a similar chestnut-like kernel. It is much eaten in China and a flour is made from it. In European cooking, water chestnuts are sliced and added to meats and stews; they are the main ingredient of a risotto made in the Loire region of France.
Gastronomically more important is Chinese water chestnut, or pi-tsi which is quite another thing, the tuber of a sedge (Eleocharis tuberosa), and not a nut at all. It is comparable to the *chufa nut (which also is not a nut but the tuber of a sedge).These water chestnuts are a common ingredient in Chinese food, and can be bought canned in water. Like bamboo shoots, they retain their crispness when cooked. Their name comes from the appearance of the fresh tuber, which is chestnut coloured though otherwise only vaguely like a chestnut in appearance. The South American tuber jicana is sometimes substituted, and is available in the US.
[Water Chestnut – French: saligot, macre, chataigne d’eau, cornioffe German: Wassernuss Italian: frutto della castagno d’acqua]
WATER LEMON. See passion fruit.
WATERMELON. See melon.
WAX BEAN. Waxy-looking variety of green bean (see kidney bean).
WEATHER. Daily changes in barometric pressure make slight differences to the boiling point of water, but not large enough to cause trouble in the way that *altitude can. Temperature is of much greater importance (unless the kitchen is air-conditioned). For instance, a humid hot atmosphere is bad for pastry-making, and good puff pastry is almost impossible to make and work with in a hot kitchen. In summer in Italy, when the weather is hot and dry, cooks have great difficulty in making shaped pasta like tortellini, because the pasta dries and cracks before the dozens of little squares can be filled and twisted. In hot weather, you may have to make use of the refrigerator, even in such normally simple operations as making butter icing, but with operations too large for the household refrigerator to handle, you may well face disaster unless you do the work at night or very early in the morning. On the other hand, some preparations do better in warm weather, it is marginally more trouble to make mayonnaise and yoghurt in winter than in summer.
[Weather – French: temps German: Wetter Italian: tempo Spanish: tiempo]
WEIGHTS and MEASURES. Ingredients are most easily measured out by volume, as this can be done with the simplest and least expensive equipment. The disadvantage is that it is inaccurate, particularly for measuring powdered or granular solids, as it does not take into account the size, shape and evenness of the particles, or of the way they are packed into the measure.
However, accurate measurement is mainly unnecessary in cooking (the exception is some baking). It is anyway silly to bother with fine fractions, when the substances being measured are so variable in themselves. A rough measure is also good enough if it takes a fairly large variation to give a different result. We are not manufacturers called on to produce a standard article. People who painstakingly level off a quarter teaspoon are rarely good cooks. They are usually trying to dodge the responsibility of making a judgement on the evidence provided by the eyes, tongue and nose. But it can be equally disastrous to abandon measuring altogether. I am impressed by professional chefs who can usually recite the quantities of a recipe by heart, but who, when cooking, are continually making slight adjustments. They are using both the measures and their senses in the very best way.
We have now entered an era of increasing standardization to metric measures, but this does not mean that we should throw away our old cookery books. To do *conversions of weights from the British and American measures to metric is only a matter of multiplying or using tables. It is also very simple to make old spring-balance scales with the metric weights so that you have both (printed metric scales are sold for some old scales of standard makes). For volumes, it is best to keep sets of metric, British and American standard cups and spoons, and to work the recipe from the original. The cost of plastic measures is small, and the time saved soon pays for them. To avoid mistakes, have each set in a different colour.
All systems of weights and measures start with something arbitrary. The grain was an average grain of wheat, the carat was a carob bean, and the Indian masha was the seed of the black gram. The innovation in the metric system was not in its basic unit, which in its way was as arbitrary as any, but because the various units were linked and made dependent one on the other. The other difference, of course, was the division of units into 10 parts. Very shortly, the old measures may be a matter of history, but we will still have our old cookery books and it is another matter whether the old habits will completely die.
British & American volumes | Metric equivalents
1 gill (gl) British American
4 gills = 1 pint (pt) 142 ml 118 ml
2 pints = 1 quart (qt) 568 ml 473 ml
4 qrts. = 1 gallon (gl) 4.54 lt 3.79 lt
From the conversion table you will see that while the Imperial pint is more than half a litre the US pint is less. Up to the mid-19th century the British and American measures were the same, but on the other hand, a gallon of wine was 231 cubic inches and there was another gallon of 282 cubic inches for beer. On this basis, a gallon of water weighed roughly 8 ⅓ pounds; a pint did not weigh exactly a pound nor did a fluid ounce, of which there were 16 to the pint, weigh exactly one ounce. In other words, the system was a mess. (You must remember in all this that a fluid ounce is a measure of volume, not of weight, and that the weight of a fluid ounce will vary according to the density of the substance being measured.)
In the 19th century, the British made an attempt to rationalize things by introducing a new gallon, an Imperial gallon, which was a measure of water weighing 10 lb (instead of 8 ⅓ as previously) and, equalling 277 cubic inches. In 1864, the apothecaries’ fluid ounce was changed to be exactly an ounce of water, which gave 20 instead of 16 fluid ounces to the pint. The American measures stayed put. This has had British and American cooks, publishers and food manufacturers swearing ever since.
For small quantities in the kitchen, the difference between American and British fluid ounces can be ignored. In fact, the British fluid ounce is 28.4 ml and the American is 29.6 ml. This means that the conversion rate between British 20 fl oz pints and American 16 fl oz is not, as you might expect, 20:16, but 6:5.
With weights, the situation is a little simpler, as the smaller
measures are the same on both sides of the Atlantic.
Avoirdupois (British)
1 dram or drachm (dr) (1.77 g)
16 drams = 1 ounce (oz) (28.34 g)
16 ounces = 1 pound (lb) (453.6 g)
14 pounds = 1 stone (st) (6.34 Kg)
28 pounds = 1 quarter
4 quarters or 112 pounds = 1 hundredweight (cwt) (50.8 Kg)
20 hundredweights = 1 ton (1016 Kg)
The American avoirdupois system is basically the same except that the stone has been dropped and the large commercial weights have been rounded off.
100 pounds = 1 hundredweight (45.4 Kg)
20 hundredweights = 1 ton (907 Kg)
The British ton of 2240 lbs is known as a long ton and the American ton of 2000 lbs is called a short ton.T he British ton is closer to the metric ton or tonne, which is 1000 Kg (2205 lb).
Kitchen measures. In Britain and Europe, most kitchens have scales, but in the US, standard cups and spoons are used to measure both liquids and solids. This system is both less accurate and sometimes means that the textures of solids must be specified – for example, a cup of coarse salt does not weigh the same as a cup of fine salt. There is actually a British standard measuring cup, but it has never been very popular and British households tend to rely on ordinary cups and spoons or to use a graduated measure. Although crockery is not standardized, the approximate sizes of cups are as follows: breakfast cup 7-8 fl oz (200-225 ml),teacup 5 fl oz (140-145 ml), coffee cup 3 fl oz (80-85 mi).The British standard cup in Imperial measures is ½ pt or 10 fl oz, and 4 British cups are thus roughly the same as 5 US cups (which are 8 US fl oz each).The British but not the Americans use the dessertspoon, which is 2 teaspoons (10 ml), but the teaspoon and tablespoon are the same on both sides of the Atlantic. For measuring solid ingredients, all spoons are level ones unless otherwise stated in the recipe.