86 MEALS |. MEDICINAL. 
vaten aS a fine gravy soup. No condiments are required to 
| flavour it. 
Lentils contain of proteid food 25 per cent, with 56 per cent 
of starch, and 2 per cent respectively of fatty, and mineral 
matters. In common with peas, they are the beef of the 
vegetable kingdom. Peas are richer in potash, and magnesia ; 
Lentils are richer in soda, and iron. As for pease pudding, 
Sir Benjamin Richardson said, “ it took two whole days to cook, 
and two whole weeks to get rid of.” But digestive flours of 
both peas, and lentils are now skilfully manufactured, the latter 
_ being richer in phosphates. Concerning this leguminous pulse, 
writes Henry Ryecroft (1903): “I hate with a bitter hatred 
the names of lentils, and haricots, those pretentious cheats of 
the appetite, those tabulated humbugs, those certificated 
crudities, calling themselves human food. An ounce of either 
is equivalent to, we are told, how many pounds (?) of the best 
rump steak. There are not many ounces of commonsense in 
the brain of him who proves it, or of him who believes it. 
Preach, and tabulate as you will, the English palate, which is 
the supreme judge, rejects this farinaceous makeshift. What 
is the intellectual and moral state of that man who really 
believes that chemical analysis can be an equivalent for natural 
gusto? I will get more nourishment out of an inch of right 
Cambridge sausage, aye, out of a couple of ounces of honest 
tripe, than can be yielded me by half a hundredweight of the 
best lentils ever grown.” 
BEEF. 
THE flesh of the ox has been long reputedly in this country the 
highest form of sustenance, for both the sound, and the sick. 
Its solid parts are composed of albumin, fat, creatin, creatinin, 
inosinic acid, muscular tissue, and various salts. Its chief 
nutriment consists in the albumin, and fibrin, for building up 
the solids of the body. These elements become coagulated into 
insoluble substance by heat, and have therefore to be of necessity 
excluded from liquid extracts of Beef, made to be kept, and taken 
hot. Raw Beef is more readily assimilated when eaten than 
cooked meat, because its albumin has not become hardened by 
heat ; but there is always the risk of its then containing noxious 
parasites which can only be killed by cooking. If Beef, or other 
