A Note on the Recipes

A Note on the Recipes

The recipes in these seven volumes were written to be cooked, which means they were written to be safe. A few plain truths are worth gathering here, at the back, where a cook can find them again.

The surest instrument in any kitchen is a thermometer, because the eye is a poor judge of a temperature it cannot see. Cook poultry to an internal 74°C (165°F); minced and ground meats to 71°C (160°F); whole cuts of beef, pork and lamb to 63°C (145°F), rested a few minutes off the heat; and fish until it is opaque and just flakes, about 63°C (145°F). These are the temperatures at which the common hazards are undone, and no colour or firmness or family tradition is a reliable substitute for the reading itself.

Two hazards deserve to be named plainly, because they are invisible and because good cooks still meet them. The first is raw egg, in a mayonnaise, an aïoli, a mousse or a dressing: use only the freshest eggs from a source you trust, keep them cold, and for anyone very young, very old, pregnant or unwell, reach instead for pasteurised eggs, which carry the same silk without the risk. The second is garlic — or herbs — stored in oil. An unbroken film of oil is a low-oxygen world, and in it the spore of Clostridium botulinum can wake and make one of the deadliest toxins known, with nothing to see, smell or taste as warning. Never keep garlic-in-oil at room temperature; make it in small amounts, keep it cold, use it within a few days, or freeze it — and treat any commercial version, which has been acidified for exactly this reason, as the safer path.

Beyond that, the old disciplines hold. Cool leftovers quickly and refrigerate them within two hours; reheat them thoroughly, once. Treat fermentation and preserving with respect, following a tested method and an honest measure of salt, and remember that low-acid foods put up for the shelf need proper pressure-canning, not hope; when a ferment or a jar looks, smells or fizzes wrongly, it costs nothing to begin again. And never eat a wild or foraged food you cannot name with certainty. None of this is meant to frighten a cook away from the stove. It is only the same courtesy the whole book has argued for, turned toward the people you feed: that to take trouble over their dinner includes taking trouble that it will do them nothing but good.