128 BULLETIN OP THE UNIVERSITY OP WISCONSIN. 



§2. Modes of Cooking. Local Practices with Criticisms. — 

 As has been said, the primary purpose of cooking is to advance 

 the assmiilability of foods as they are found in the raw state so 

 as to relieve the digestive apparatus of much arduous drudgery. 

 For the most part this is accomplished by applications in one 

 form or another of heat. In the cookery of meats it should be 

 the aim to soften tissues and develop flavors which will excite 

 digestive juices; and those modes will be most efficient which 

 will attain these ends while not destroying the nutritive proper- 

 ties. In roasting, baking, and broiling heat is applied directly 

 to the surface of the meat ; whereas in boiling and frying it is 

 conveyed by convection, in the first instance through water, in 

 the second through oil. ISTow, one of the most valuable elements 

 of meat, albumen, exists in considerable quantities as a juice; 

 and this escapes with comparative ease in boiling when the meat 

 is put into cold water and gradually raised to the boiling tem- 

 perature. When the meat is thrust into boiling water at the 

 outset, however, the pores in the surface become closed in such 

 a way as to prevent in a large degree the loss of the juices, and 

 the cooking may proceed with comparatively little waste. The 

 most economical modes of cooking this article, though, are those 

 in which a high degree of heat is applied directly, as in baking, 

 broiling, or roasting. Frying is the most objectionable method 

 of all, and especially the sort of frying w T hich one finds in the 

 average boarding-house or even in the majority of homes. 

 Here the cook places a little oil in the bottom of the frying pan 

 "to keep the meat from sticking to it," and heats it to a point 

 at which the fat is partly decomposed ; she never imagines that 

 in frying cooking should be accomplished in the same way as 

 in water except that a different medium is used. What is to 

 be secured is the transmission of heat through the oil. Cooking 

 in this way would not be so objectionable if a bath of fat were 

 used instead of a little in the bottom of the frying pan ; although 

 even here food is liable to be made indigestible by becoming 

 fat soaked, so to speak. It is of course well-known that the fat 

 which incases the nutritive elements in fried meats, eggs, and 



