THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY, 641 



A friend who read my Cantor lectures tells me that he has long been 

 accustomed to have seven dishes of porridge in his larder, correspond- 

 ing to the days of the week, so that next Monday's breakfast was 

 cooked the Monday before, and so on, each being warmed again on 

 the day fixed for its final execution, and each being thus seven days 

 old. He finds the result more digestible than newly-made porridge. 

 The classical nine days' old pease-pudding is a similar anticipation, 

 and I find, rather curiously, that nine days is about the limit to which 

 it may be practically kept before mildew — moldiness — is sufficiently 

 established to spoil the pudding. I have not yet tried a barrel full of 

 pease-pudding or moistened pease-meal, closely covered and power- 

 fully pressed down, but hope to do so. 



Besides these we have a notable example of ensilage in sour-kraut 

 — a foreign luxury that John Bull, with his usual blindness, denounces, 

 as a matter of course. " Horrid stuff," " beastly mess," and such-like 

 expressions, I hear whenever I name it to certain persons. Who are 

 these persons? Simply Englishmen and Englishwomen who have 

 never seen, never tasted, and know nothing whatever of what they 

 denounce so violently, in spite of the fact that it is a staple article of 

 food among millions of highly-intelligent people. Common sense (to 

 say nothing of that highest result of true scientific training, the faculty 

 of suspending judgment until the arrival of knowledge) should sug- 

 gest that some degree of investigation should precede the denuncia- 

 tion. 



In the cases of the sour-kraut and the ripening pear there is acid at 

 work upon the fiber, which, as I have before stated, assists in the con- 

 version of such indigestible fiber into soluble and digestible dextrin 

 and sugar ; but the demand for the solution of the vegetable casein 

 or legumin, which has such high nutritive value and is so abundant in 

 peas, etc., is of the opposite kind. Acids solidify and harden casein, 

 alkalies soften and dissolve it. Therefore the chemical agent suggested 

 as a suitable aid in the ensilage or slow cookery, or the boiling or rapid 

 cookery, of leguminous food is such an alkali as may be wholesome 

 and compatible with the demands for nutrition. 



Now, the analyses of peas, beans, and lentils, etc., show a deficiency 

 of potash salts as compared with the quantity of nitrogenous nutriment 

 they contain ; therefore I propose, as in the case of cheese-food, that 

 we should add this potash in the convenient and safe form of bicar- 

 bonate, not merely add it to the water in which the vegetables may 

 be boiled, and which water is thrown away (as in the common prac- 

 tice of adding soda when boiling greens), but add the potash to the 

 actual pease-porridge, pease-pudding, lentil-soup, etc., and treat it as a 

 part of the food as well as an adjunct to the cookery. This is espe- 

 cially required when we use dried peas, dried beans of any kind, such 

 as haricots, dried lentils, etc. 



I find that taking the ordinary yellow split-peas and boiling them 



VOL. XXV.— 41 



