NEW VIEWS AS TO BEEF TEA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIV, Issue 7840, 8 January 1887, Page 2 (Supplement)

NEW VIEWS AS TO BEEF TEA.

Some of the latest information about beef tea has been collected by Good Housekeeping, and the result will be startling to many invalids aud nurses. Dr. FothergillV* Manual of Dietetics" says that beef tea, as ordinarily prepared, is practically destitute matter that can ever form tissue, and is equally without value as fuel food. Sir William Roberts says :—" The notion prevails that the nourishing qualities of the meat pass into the decoction, and that the dry, hard remnant of the meat fibre which remains undissolved is exhausted of its nutriment properties. In making common beef tea, the ingredients which pass into solution are the rapid extractives and aslinea of the meat, and nothing more, except some trifling amount of gelatine. The meat remnant*, on the other hand, contain the actual nutriment of the meat ; and if this be beaten to a paste with a spoon, or pounded in a mortar, and duly flavoured with salt and other condiments, it constitutes not only a highly nourishing and agreeable, but also an exceedingly digestible form of food." "I can see sundry readers," says Dr. Fothergill, "having been driven past the stage of incredulity by the hard logic of facta, wringing their hands in anguish over the thought of departed relatives who have been practically starved to death on beef tea. The mistaken views about the nutritive value of beef tea have been murderous."

"Whole" beef tea is no doubt a good food — very good in convalescence from acute diseases, when wasted muscular tissue has to bo repaired. Bat in many cases it is open to question whether so much albuminous matter is either good or desirable. When this is not used there should be added a teaspoonful of any baked flour to a teacupful of ordinary beef tea and some salt. ' Well baked flour is largely changed into soluble dextrine; and beef tea, containing some Buch addition, is a capital food. If the baked flour be made from unbolted flour, then some albuminoid matter is present an well as the salts of the grain. Such will make an ideal fluid food, Dr. King Chambers gives directions for preparing nutritious beef toa :—The.virtue of beef tea is to contain all the contents and flavours of lean beef in a liquid form; and that its vices are to be sticky and strong and to set like a hard jelly when cold. Take half a pound of freshly-killed beef for every pint of beef tea required, and remove all fat, sinew, veins, and bone. Let it be cut into pieces under half an inoh square, and soak for twelve hours in one-third of the water. Let it then be taken out and simmered for two hours in the remaining two-thirds of the water, the quantity lost by evaporation being replaced from time to time. The boiling liquor is then to be poured on the cold liquor in which the meat was soaked. The solid meat is to be dried, pounded in a mortar, freed from all stringy parts, and mixed with the rest. This is " whole " beef tea.