204 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



Sugar vs. Pork. — If sugar and pork are the same 

 price, which is the cheapest food for a family? Many 

 persons who buy their meat, are excessively penurious in 

 their purchases of sugar, under the impression that they 

 cannot afford it. I am confident that they are mistaking 

 their own interest. Besides, sugar, particularly for chil- 

 dren, is a much more healthy diet. That is, when not 

 used to excess. 



Change of Diet. — This is a subject upon which by 

 far too little attention is paid. Human aliment is often 

 productive of health or sickness, and consequently of 

 human happiness or misery. Children in particular, re- 

 quire a constant change ; but the change should be a ju- 

 dicious one. I wish that many of the able medical men 

 who read your paper, would make communications to it 

 upon the subject of human diet. 



Washing Butter. — I venture to assert without fear 

 of contradiction, that no family eat sweeter butter than 

 mine, either new or old, and my wife always washes 

 her butter thoroughly in cold water. The object of wash- 

 ing butter is to divest it of all the particles of buttermilk. 

 If the cream or milk has made bonny-clabber, there will 

 inevitably be small particles of it distributed throughout 

 the whole mass of butter, and unless they are entirely 

 removed in some way, that butter will most certainly 

 become rancid. Working the butter in cold water will 

 dissolve all these particles of congealed milk, and the 

 water is easily worked out, or should a few drops remain, 

 it will unite with the salt and form pure brine. If there 

 is any other manner by which the butter can be freed 

 from the milk more easily, I should like to know it. 



My butter, although "spoil'd by washing it," when 

 packed in a pot or keg, with a clean cloth pressed on the 

 top, and a little brine on the top of that, say half an inch 

 deep, will keep a year, as sweet as ever unwashed butter 

 was, is, or can be kept in any manner whatever. These 

 are facts. Now let us have the facts in opposition to the 

 cold water system. 



