THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY. 22 i 



Reflecting on this subject, I have been struck with a curious fact 

 that has hitherto escaped notice, viz., that, in the country which over 

 all others combines a very large population with a very small allow- 

 ance of cleanliness, the ordinary drink of the people is boiled water 

 flavored by an infusion of leaves. These people, the Chinese, seem, in 

 fact, to have been the inventors of boiled-water beverages. Judging 

 from travelers' accounts of the state of the rivers, rivulets, and general 

 drainage and irrigation arrangements of China, its population could 

 scarcely have reached its present density if Chinamen were drinkers 

 of raw instead of cooked water. 



III. COOKING UNDER WATEE. 



Next to the boiling of water for its own sake, as treated in my last, 

 comes the boiling of water as a medium for the cooking of other things. 

 Here, at the outset, I have to correct an error of language which, as 

 too often happens, leads by continual suggestion to false ideas. When 

 we speak of " boiled beef," " boiled mutton," " boiled eggs," " boiled 

 potatoes," we talk nonsense ; we are not merely using an elliptical ex- 

 pression, as when we say " the kettle boils," which we all understand to 

 mean the contents of the kettle, but we are expounding a false theory 

 of what has happened to the beef, etc. as false as though we should 

 describe the material of the kettle that has held boiling water as boiled 

 copper or boiled iron. No boiling of the food takes place in any such 

 cases as the above-named it is merely heated by immersion in boiling 

 water ; the changes that actually take place in the food are essentially 

 different from those of ebullition. Even the water contained in the 

 meat is not boiled in ordinary cases, as its boiling-point is higher 

 than that of the surrounding water, owing to the salts it holds in 

 solution. 



Thus, as a matter of chemical fact, a " boiled leg of mutton " is one 

 that has been cooked, but not boiled ; while a roasted leg of mutton is 

 one that has been partially boiled. Much of the constituent water of 

 flesh is boiled out, fairly driven away as vapor during roasting or 

 baking, and the fat on its surface is also boiled, and, more or less, dis- 

 sociated into its chemical elements, carbon and water, as shown by the 

 browning, due to the separated carbon. 



As I shall presently show, this verbal explanation is no mere verbal 

 quibble, but it involves important practical applications. An enormous 

 waste of precious fuel is perpetrated every day, throughout the whole 

 length and breadth of Britain and other countries where English cook- 

 ery prevails, on account of the almost universal ignorance of the phi- 

 losophy of the so-called boiling of food. 



When it is once fairly understood that the meat is not to be boiled, 

 but is merely to be warmed by immersion in water raised to a maxi- 

 mum temperature of 212, and when it is further understood that water 

 can not (under ordinary atmospheric pressure) be raised to a higher 



