THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY, 215 



Some time is required for the conversion of the starch by this 

 animal diastase, and in some animals there is a special laboratory or 

 kitchen for effecting this preliminary cookery of vegetable food. 

 Ruminating animals have a special stomach-cavity for this purpose 

 in which the food, after mastication, is held for some time and kept 

 warm before passing into the cavity which secretes the gastric juice. 

 The crop of grain-eating birds appears to perform a similar function. 

 It is there mixed with a secretion corresponding to saliva, and is thus 

 partially malted — in this case before mastication in the gizzard. 



At a later stage of digestion, the starch that has escaped conversion 

 by the saliva is again subjected to the action of animal diastase con^ 

 tained in the pancreatic juice, which is very similar to saliva. 



It is a fair inference from these facts that creatures like ourselves, 

 who are not provided with a crop or compound stomach, and mani- 

 festly secrete less saliva than horses or other grain- munching animals, 

 require some preliminary assistance when we adopt graminivorous 

 habits ; and one part of the business of cookery is to supply such pre- 

 liminary treatment to the oats, barley, wheat, maize, peas, beans, etc., 

 which we cultivate and use for food. 



XXXI. 



Having described the changes effected by heat upon starch, and 

 referred to its further conversion into dextrin and sugar, I will now 

 take some practical examples of the cookery of starch-foods, begin- 

 ning with those which are composed of pure, or nearly pure, starch. 



When arrowroot is merely stirred in cold water it sinks to the bot- 

 tom undissolved and unaltered. When cooked in the usual manner to 

 form the well-known mucilaginous or jelly-like food, the change is a 

 simple case of the swelling and breaking up of the granules described 

 as occurring in water at the temperature of 140° Fahr. There appears 

 to be no reason for limiting the temperature, as the same action takes 

 place from 140° upward, to the boiling-point of water. 



I may here mention a peculiarity of another form of nearly pure 

 starch-food, viz., tapioca, which is obtained by pulping and washing 

 out the starch-granules of the root of the manihot, then heating the 

 washed starch in pans and stirring it while hot with iron or wooden 

 paddles. This cooks and breaks up the granules and agglutinates the 

 starch into nodules which, as Mr. James Collins explains (" Journal of 

 Society of Arts," March 14, 1884), are thereby coated with dextrin, to 

 which gummy coating some of the peculiarities of tapioca-pudding are 

 attributable. It is a curious fact that this manihot-root, from which 

 our harmless tapioca is obtained, is terribly poisonous. The plant is 

 one of the large family of nauseous spurge worts (Euphorhiacece). The 

 poison resides in the milky juice surrounding the starch-granules, but, 

 being both soluble in water and volatile, most of it is washed away in 

 separating the starch-granules, and any that remains after washing is 



