Wise words live on

A few years ago, I found a gem of a book in a charity shop. ‘Wise Words & Country Ways for Cooks’ by Ruth Binney.

Only now did I actually read through it and I went on a trip down memory lane. The book is filled with old wives’ tales as well as advice from cookery writers such as Mrs Beeton and Fannie Merritt Farmer.

A lot of the tips listed make a lot of sense if you grew up in the 20th century but might seem outdated in today’s home kitchens. In the chapter Tasty Meat & Fish, it says that you can’t overcook pork. Yes, you can. It will be dry and tough to eat but this advice was life-saving 100 years ago due to the eggs of tapeworms which needed to be ‘cooked out’ (pork nowadays is perfectly safe to eat). As pork can be fatty, the addition of sage or caraway seeds is suggested to cut through the fattiness.

Serving mint sauce with lamb is not only for flavour but also to make the meat more digestible. I grew up with stews cooked for hours by my mum. She never let the stew boil and Ruth Binney found the same sentiment - “stew boiled is stew spoiled” as the meat becomes stringy if the pot is allowed to boil. Also, slow cooking the stew meat ensures that the fat melts slowly into the stew, adding layers of flavour.

During Mrs Beeton’s times, the saying ‘A happy hen is a tasty hen’ has definitely translated well into the 21st century. ‘The colder the dish, the more seasoning it needs’ is advice I have not heard but it makes sense. Chilled food has little flavour; that’s why we take cheese out of the fridge about 30 minutes before we want to eat it. It gives the flavours enough time to ‘stick their nose’ out.

In the chapter All the best methods, it is advised to add sugar if the soup is too salty. I tend to add a pinch of sugar to tomato soups, not so much that I am too generous with the salt but to bring the savoury aroma of the tomatoes out. Sugar neutralises the taste of salt.

Saying that, my grandmother added potato slices to stews and soups if she was too happy with the salt shaker.

When I started cooking, people told me to peel onions under water. I tried it once and didn’t like it, still don’t. I ‘wash’ the chopped onions if I want to get rid of the sharp flavour but not to avoid the rivers of tears.

Fishmongers are my best friends as they tend to filet any fish for you and have the skin already cleaned. But if I needed to skin a fish myself, I know now that you should skin the fish tail to head unless it is whiting or haddock (I have not tried skinning a fish and can’t see myself wanting to).

One wisdom I am taking away is not to chop garlic or press it through the garlic mincer but to give it a ‘decisive’ bash with a wooden rolling pin (maybe not the one you use for rolling out sweet pastry) to avoid releasing the acrid chemicals which gives you the bitter, pungent smell. Old wives tales are still relevant today, especially when it comes to cooking.