394 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



which constitute the mixture, when well prepared, nutritious and 

 highly agreeable. The analogue of this mainly Italian dish is the 

 -pilau or pilaff of the Orientals, consisting as it does of nearly the same 

 materials, but differently arranged. The curry of poultry and the 

 kedgeree of fish are further varieties which it is unnecessary to de- 

 scribe. Follow the same combination to Spain, where we find a popu- 

 lar national dish, but slightly differing from the foregoing, in the 

 polio con arroz, which consists of abundance of rice, steeped in a little 

 broth and containing morsels of fowl, bacon, and sausage, with appe- 

 tizing spices, and sufficing for an excellent meal. 



Another farinaceous product of world-wide use is the maize or In- 

 dian corn. With a fair amount of nitrogen, starch, and mineral ele- 

 ments, it contains also a good proportion of fat, and is made into 

 bread, cakes, and puddings of various kinds. It is complete, but sus- 

 ceptible of improvement by the addition of nitrogen. Hence, in the 

 United States, where it is largely used, it is often eaten with beans 

 under the name of " succotash." In Italy it is ground into the beauti- 

 ful yellow flour which is conspicuous in the streets of almost every 

 town ; when made into a firm paste by boiling in water, and sprinkled 

 with Parmesan cheese, a nitrogenous aliment, it becomes what is 

 known as polenta, and is largely consumed with some relish in the 

 shape of fried fish, sardines, sausage, little birds, or morsels of fowl or 

 goose, by which, of course, fresh nitrogen is added. Macaroni has 

 been already alluded to ; although rich in nitrogenous and starchy 

 materials, it is deficient in fat. Hence it is boiled and eaten with but- 

 ter and parmesan (d V italienne) and with tomatoes, which furnish 

 saline matters, with meat gravy, or with milk. 



Nearer home the potato forms a vegetable basis in composition 

 closely resembling rice, and requiring therefore additions of nitroge- 

 nous and fatty elements. The Irishman's inseparable ally, the pig, is 

 the natural, and to him necessary, complement of the tuber, making 

 the latter a complete and palatable dish. The every-day combination 

 of mashed potato and sausage is an application of the same principle. 

 In the absence of pork, the potato-eater substitutes a cheap oily fish, 

 the herring. The combination of fatty material with the potato is 

 still further illustrated in our baked potato and butter, in fried pota- 

 toes in their endless variety of form, in potato mashed with milk or 

 cream, served in the ordinary way with maitre (Photel butter, or arriv- 

 ing at the most perfect and finished form in the pommes de terre sau- 

 tees an beurre of a first-class French restaurant, where it becomes al- 

 most a, plat de luxe. Even the simple bread and butter or bread and 

 cheese of our own country equally owe their form and popularity to 

 physiological necessity ; the deficient fat of the bread being supple- 

 mented by the fatty elements of each addition, the cheese supplying 

 also its proportion of nitrogenous matter, which exists so largely in 

 its peculiar principle caseine. So, again, all the suet-puddings, " short- 



