THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY. 377 



depreciates the flavor, besides sacrificing some of the nutritious albu- 

 men. 



To demonstrate this experimentally, take two equal slices from the 

 same salmon, cook one according to Mrs. Beeton and other orthodox 

 authorities by putting it into cold water, or pouring cold water over 

 it, then heating up to the boiling-point. Cook the other slice by put- 

 ting it into water nearly boiling (about 200 Fahr.), and keeping it at 

 about 180 to 200, but never boiling at all. Then dish up, examine, 

 and taste. The second will be found to have retained more of its 

 proper salmon color and flavor, the first will be paler and more like 

 cod, or other white fish, owing to the exosmosis or oozing out of its 

 characteristic juices. 



I was surprised, and at first considerably puzzled, at what I saw of 

 salmon-cooking in Norway. As this fish is so abundant there (two 

 cents per pound would be regarded as a high price in the Tellemark), I 

 naturally supposed that large experience, operating by natural selec- 

 tion, would have evolved the best method of cooking it, but found 

 that, not only in the farm-houses of the interior, but at such hotels as 

 the Victoria, in Christiania, the usual cookery was effected by cutting 

 the fish into small pieces and soddening it in water in such wise that 

 it came to table almost colorless, and with merely a faint suggestion 

 of what we prize as the rich flavor of salmon. A few months' expe- 

 rience and a little reflection solved the problem. Salmon is so rich, 

 and has so special a flavor, that when daily eaten it soon palls on the 

 palate. Everybody has heard the old story of the clause in the in- 

 dentures of the Aberdeen apprentices, binding the masters not to feed 

 the boys on salmon more frequently than twice a week. If the story 

 is not true it ought to be, for salmon every day would have the same 

 effect as the daily breakfasts of boiled fat pork and dumplings on the 

 voracious hero of another story. 



By boiling out the rich oil of the salmon, the Norwegian reduces 

 it nearly to the condition of codfish, concerning which I learned a cu- 

 rious fact from the two old Doggerbank fishermen with whom I had 

 a long sailing-cruise from the Golden Horn to the Thames. They 

 agreed in stating that codfish is like bread, that they and all their 

 mates lived upon it (and sea-biscuits) day after day for months to- 

 gether, and never tired, while richer fish ultimately became repulsive 

 if eaten daily. This statement was elicited by an immediate expe- 

 rience. We were in the Mediterranean, where the bonetta was very 

 abundant, and every morning and evening I amused myself by spear- 

 ing them from the martingale of the schooner, and so successfully that 

 all hands (or rather mouths) were abundantly supplied with this de- 

 licious, dark-fleshed, full-blooded, and high-flavored fish. I began by 

 making three meals a day on it, and at the end of about a week was 

 glad to return to the ordinary ship's fare of salt-junk and chickens. 



This is not exactly a digression, seeing that the philosophy of the 



