USES OF CEREALS 



561 



612. Other cereal foods are common in foreign lands, 

 but not known in this country. In Russia the kernels of 

 emmer, proso, millet, and buckwheat have their hulls 

 removed, are then little more than cracked, and are cooked 

 and eaten as breakfast foods. On the other hand, buck- 

 wheat is not used for pancakes as in this country. In 

 Tibet and Mongolia a food, called tsamba, is made by 

 boiling barley in tea. 



613. Distilling. For the production of spirits or 

 whisky, oats, rye, and corn are all 



ground together, mashed with wa- 

 ter, and then mixed with a certain 

 amount of barley malt, which con- 

 verts the starch into sugar. The 

 addition of yeast changes the sugar 

 into alcohol, and the mixture is 

 then ready to distill. 



614. Malting and brewing. - 

 The use of barley in the produc- 

 tion of malt for brewing beer is 

 well known. In the course of the 

 germination of the barley kernel, 



there is secreted from the epithelial layer of the scutellum 

 a diastase which converts the starch into maltose, a form 

 of sugar. Mann (1908) has shown the importance of the 

 scutellum in malting, and pointed out the advantage of 

 the broader and larger scutellum in the kernels of 2-row 

 barley. There is also recently a full discussion by Mann 

 and Harlan (1915) of the enzym-secreting areas of the 

 barley kernel. It is stated that the conversion of the 

 endosperm is effected by enzyms secreted by the epithe- 

 lial layer of the scutellum, and that both cytase and dias- 

 tase must proceed from the scutellum, and the proteo- 

 2o 



FIG. 170. Variation in 

 the size and shape of the 

 scutellum (s) in different 

 barleys: a, Manchuria; 

 b, Goldthorpe. 



