i6y6 The Cornki.i. Rkadinc, Courses 



TRAVELING 



Primitive travel and transportation; by O. T. Mason. (In National 

 Museum Report, 1894, pages 237 to 593, illus.) Cloth, $1.20. 



TUCKAHOE 



Tuckahoe, or Indian bread. (In Smithsonian Report, 188 1, pages 687 

 to 701, illus.) Cloth, 70c. 



PRIMITIVE WOMAN'S DISCOVERIES AND ACHIEVEMENTS IN 



COOKING 



Mabel L. Flumerfelt 



Quite unconscious of the fact that definite scientific principles govern 

 the processes of cooking and food preparation, primitive woman has 

 worked out, by her own daily experience, many of the most important 

 principles with which we are now familiar in relation to food and 

 diet. 



We may well call attention first to her selection of food. In this, 

 nature proved to be woman's greatest helper, since it provided different 

 types of food for different seasons of the year and for different climates. 

 We know that in a cold climate the body requires more of the heat- 

 yielding foods to keep it in working condition than are necessary in a 

 warm climate; fats, such as whale blubber and oils, are liberally used 

 by the inhabitants. Large quantities of meat consisting of deer, musk 

 ox, sea mammals, and the like, are also consimied in the cold regions. 

 Here only small amounts of the less concentrated fruit and vegetable 

 foods are available; fortunately the body can adapt itself to the con- 

 ditions and get on well without large quantities of them. Thus, the bulk 

 of food eaten is not large as compared with the immense fuel value or 

 energy that it furnishes to the body. 



On the other hand, the warmer climate, where less concentrated food 

 is required to furnish sufficient body energ^^ has a much more luxuriant 

 vegetable growth. In either case, the three principal types of food mate- 

 rial — • namely, carbohydrate, protein, and fat — are present, and it has 

 only remained for primitive woman to make the jDroper selections. The 

 Eskimo has always obtained fat from fat meat and oils, protein largely 

 from meat, and carbohydrate from the few vegetables, or plants, or the 

 juices of plants, which she found growing in the warmer seasons of the 

 year. The South American Indian woman has required less protein food 

 and more carbohydrate material in the form of vegetables and fruit. She 

 has used fish and eggs and animal meat, but in smaller quantities than 

 the Eskimo has. Sweetened sap, grains, roots of plants, and plant leaves 

 have furnished her with carbohydrate; and nuts have given her a very 

 valuable source for fat, which she needs in smaller amounts than the 

 Eskimo does. 



