SOUP. 465 



the meat is to roast or grill it ; for its good qualities are 

 preserved, and it is presented in a digestible form by either of 

 these processes. Boiling deprives both meat and vegetables 

 of a large portion of their health- giving mineral matter; and 

 frying and stewing are apt to make the meat sodden with fat. 

 The chief office of the stomach is to cause the digestion 

 (solution) of albumen by means of the gastric juice, which 

 does not act on starch. Consequently, when meat is impreg- 

 nated with fat, more or less of its contained albumen is liable 

 to be passed in an unchanged condition into the intestines, 

 with the probable result of indigestion. As heat coagulates 

 albumen, clear soup will be more or less free from this 

 nourishing constituent, which is also practically absent from 

 essences of meat. If soup be used, it should be allowed to 

 cool after being made, and all the fat skimmed off. It can 

 then be heated. As soup contains almost all the nitro- 

 genous constituents of the meat which has been boiled in it, 

 this meat should be eaten by the person who takes the soup, 

 in preference to roast or grilled meat, which would furnish an 

 undesirable addition of nitrogenous material. A very whole- 

 some soup, known in Russia as shchi, is made by boiling 

 meat with a large quantity of white-heart cabbage. If in 

 frying, the pan be heated to redness before the meat is put 

 into it and no dripping, butter, lard or other kind of fatty 

 material be employed, the albumen on the outside of the meat 

 will become quickly coagulated, and the interior portion of the 

 meat will become more or less protected from the action of 

 the fat in the pan. Hence this plan of frying is much superior 

 from a health point of view, to the ordinary method. It is 

 evident that with whole fish, the objection to frying is not so 

 strong, as with cut-up meat. 



The following may be regarded as proscribed articles 

 of diet : Bread, cakes, potatoes, rice, cream, new milk, butter, 

 fat, sweets, stews, minces, puddings, pastry, salt meat, spiced 



30 



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