Muslin or cheesecloth?
Over the years though it has become increasingly difficult to source the cheesecloth/muslin. In days gone by there were lots of dress material shops, and they all had muslin and cheesecloth. These days I either have to find the one material stall in the Queen Vic market or travel to Box Hill to my nearest Spotlight store. You also used to be able to get muslin nappies. But cloth and muslin nappies seem to have died a death. Though you can probably get those pieces of cloth called bunnies that seem to act as comforters to babies and toddlers. Not big enough for a turkey though.
Until recently I confess I thought that muslin and cheesecloth were basically the same thing. But apparently not. Cheesecloth - that which is wrapped around hard cheeses like cheddar - well not much any more - has a much looser weave. Muslin, sometimes called butter muslin is much finer and therefore, you would think, more expensive. But apparently not - well not in the UK and USA anyway. Here I don't know. I don't even know whether what I have at the moment is muslin or cheesecloth. It just looked like the right stuff when I bought it.
Anyway It thought I would look into it because when I thought about it I realised that there are a whole lot of reasons to have some in your kitchen even though it is now difficult to source.
Indeed the first thing I did was to check the cookbooks that purport to go back to basics, including what you should have in your kitchen and found that Stephanie Alexander was the only one to mention muslin - and that was just in a list of 'other things' in the cook's apprentice. It was not listed in the Kitchen Equipment section of her massive Cook's Companion tome even though there are very many more obscure bits of equipment mentioned. Delia's How to Cook - nothing. Robert Carrier - who also does equipment - nothing. In French Provincial Cooking Elizabeth David gives it a sideways nod in her paragraph on Etamine.
"Etamine. Tammy cloth. Thick cloth through which liquids are strained. In most households this is replaced by a hair sieve or rather, nowadays, a nylon one, but some sort of close-woven cloth such as cheese cloth, is necessary for straining consommé, aspic, and fruit jellies."
What on earth is 'tammy cloth' one wonders. Hair sieves - ugh. And, as mentioned above, it seems that cheesecloth is loose woven, not close woven.
I was also intrigued to see various suggestions for alternatives to cheesecloth or muslin - tights - well yes, but I would be worrying about the dye. Chux wipes - ditto. Paper towel - surely this would collapse and little bits of paper would go into whatever it was you were straining. A very fine sieve - well yes if you can find one and it sort of depends what you are straining.
The general opinion seems to be that cheesecloth is best used for just that - cheese. And then not necessarily for some cheeses - soft cheeses in particular, because chunkier bits of the curds will slip through. But good to wrap around things like cheddar cheese, that need a bit of air as well to get through.
Both muslin and cheesecloth are cotton. Muslin dates way, way back. Although it is named after the town of Mosul in Iraq, which is where it first became known to the Western Europeans, it actually seems to have originated in Bengal - what is now Bangladesh in the town of Dakkah.
The weavers of Bengal made this extremely fine material that in the 17th and 18th centuries became immensely popular as a dress material. After all it had been used as such for centuries in India where its lightness and natural origins made it particularly appropriate for the hot and humid conditions of the Indian sub continent. Traders from both the Dutch and British East India Companies brought it back to Europe where it became all the rage. Indeed I vaguely remembered it being mentioned here and there in the novels of Jane Austen. However, eventually the British made their own, and then they took steps to close down the Bengali weavers because of the competition, and the industry there almost died out. It is only recently that it has been making a comeback.
As a material that has nothing to do with kitchens it is also apparently very popular for stage sets as it is light and absorbs paint very well. Ditto for green screens for films. And also for decorative table settings like this one.
I suspect that lots of food stylists use it too. It's so natural looking is it not? And yes, somehow elegant as well. And because it's relatively cheap you can have yards and yards of it.
But back to cooking. What do we use it for besides a once a year burst at turkey?
Well a more everyday use is - or at least used to be in the bouquet garni. You know, now that I think about it I don't think people do this any more. They either don't bother with the cheesecloth and just tie the herbs in a bundle, or they chop the herbs and leave them in. But we used to make neat little packages of your chosen herbs that were then removed at the end of cooking. And here I think you would use the looser cheesecloth so that the flavours of the herbs would seep out of the material and into your soup or casserole.
Conversely back then more people made their own jelly than nowadays and in order to make jelly you needed a jelly bag. Now I'm guessing you could buy actual jelly bags, but you could also improvise as shown here. I think I have only made jelly once and found it a very tedious process so have not done it again. But I do make jam, and if it's apricot or large stone fruit then I take out the stones and wrap them in muslin to cook with the fruit before adding the sugar. That way you get the pectin from the stones, but you don't have the hard work of picking out the stones. If you are dealing with pips and very small stones you might as well pick them out when the fruit is cooked. It's just as hard work to pick them out before you cook the fruit.
If you want to strain anything finely and a sieve won't do then you will need muslin - if you wanted to make consommé for example. But who, apart from haute cuisine chefs, does that these days? Ditto for aspic. If you want to have a go at making your own cottage cheese, paneer or ricotta you will need muslin. And speaking of cheese what about those beautiful 'sweet' cheese dishes - coeurs à la crème?
I have always hankered after making these but just like the cheesecloth, you actually will have difficulty sourcing the right equipment - heart shaped, ceramic dishes with holes in the bottom in order to make it. You line these moulds with your muslin, pour in your cheese mixture, leave to drain, unmould and serve, beautifully decorated with some kind of fruit as here.
Mind you, some time ago now, delicious published a recipe for coeur à la crème which got around the ceramic dish problem - but not the muslin one. It was called Ricotta and lemon coeur à la crème and it came from one of my favourite cooks Belinda Jefferey. It's a bit of a misnomer really because coeur means heart, and this is not a heart shape. Looks delicious though and I have always meant to give it a go, but never have.
And finally I found another specialised use for muslin or cheesecloth - making bresaola - which is that Italian air dried beef. But once again a bit advanced and a bit worrying really. The author - Tim Hayward seemed to think it was easy, but I confess I would be anxious about it going off. And anyway why would you when you can buy the genuine article from Italy at your local supermarket?
And I guess that's the thing about cheesecloth/musling isn't it? It's uses are mostly somewhat esoteric although I guess if you consider yourself a foodie some of its uses are becoming more commonplace. I shall certainly be keeping some in my storecupboard - if only for the occasional labne and tzatziki and the annual turkey.
