Dec. 7, 1883.] 



• KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



343 



pepper ; stew over the fire till boiling, and should there be 

 any lumps, strain the souffle paste through a tammy cloth ; 

 add 7 oz. of grated Parmesan cheese, and 7 yolks of eggs ; 

 whip the whites till they are firm, and add them to the 

 mixture ; fill some paper cases with it, and bake in the 

 oven for fifteen minutes." 



Cre-Fydd says : — " Grate six ounces of rich cheese (Par- 

 mesan is the best) ; put it into an enamelled saucepan, 

 with a teaspoonful of flour of mustard, a saltspoonful of 

 white pepper, a grain of cayenne, the sixth part of a 

 nutmeg, grated, two ounces of butter, two tablespoonfuls of 

 baked flour, and a gill of new milk ; stir it over slow fire 

 till it becomes like smooth, thick cream (but it must not 

 boil) ; add the well-beaten yolks of six eggs, beat for ten 

 minutes, then add the whites of the eggs beaten to a stiff 

 froth ; put the mixture into a tin or a cardboard mould, 

 and bake in a quick oven for twenty minutes. Serve 

 immediately." 



Here is a true cookery of cheese by solution, and the 

 result is an excellent dish. But there is some unnecessary 

 complication and kitchen pedantry involved. The following 

 is my own simplified recipe : — 



Take j lb. of grated cheese ; add it to a gill of milk in 

 which is dissolved as much powdered bicarbonate of potash 

 as will stand upon a threepenny piece ; mustard, pepper, 

 itc, as prescribed above by Cre-Fydd.* Heat this carefully 

 until the cheese is completely dissolved. Then beat up 

 three eggs, yolk and whites together, and add them to this 

 solution of cheese, stirring the whole. Now take a shallow 

 metal or earthenware dish or tray that will bear heating ; 

 put a little butter on this, and heat the butter till it frizzles. 

 Then pour the mixture into this, and bake or fry it until 

 it is nearly solidified. 



A cheaper dish may be made by increasing the propor- 

 tion of cheese — say, .six to eight ounces to three eggs, or 

 only one egg to | lb. of cheese for a hard-working man with 

 powerful digestion. 



The chief Wifiiculty in preparing this dish conveniently is 

 that of obtaining suitable vessels for the final frying or 

 baking, as each portion should be poured into, and fried or 

 baked in, a separate dish, so that each may, as in Switzer- 

 land, have his own fondu complete, and eat it from the 

 dish as it comes from the fire. As demand creates supply, 

 our ironmongers, &c., will soon learn to meet this demand 

 if it arises. I am about writing to Messrs. Griffiths & 

 Browett, of Birmingham, largo manufacturers of what is 

 technically called "hollow ware" — i.e., vessels of all kinds 

 knocked up from a single piece of metal without any solder- 

 ing, and have little doubt that they will speedily produce 

 suitable fondu dishes according to my specification, and 

 supply them to the shopkeepers. 



The bicarbonate of potash is an original novelty that 

 will possibly alarm some of my non-chemical readers. I 

 advocate its use for two reasons. First, it eflects a better 

 solution of the casein by neutralising the free lactic acid 

 that inevitably e.xists in milk supplied to towns, and any 

 free acid that may remain in the cheese. At a farm-house 

 where the milk is just drawn from the cow it is unneces- 

 sary for this purpose, as such new milk is itself slightly 

 alkaline. My second reason is physiological, and of greater 

 weight. Salts of potash are necessary constituents of 

 human food. They exist in all kinds of wholesome vege- 



* Before the Adulteration Act was passed, mustard flour was 

 usually mixed with well-dried wlieaten flour, whereby the redundant 

 oil was absorbed, and tlie mixture was a dry powder. Now it is 

 different, being pure powdered mustard seed, and usually i-ather 

 damp. It not only lies closer, but is mucli stronger. Therefore, in 

 following any recipe of old cookery-books, only about half the stated 

 i|unnlity should bo used. 



tables and fruits, and in the juices ot fresh meat, but they 

 are wantiiig in cheese, having, on account of their great 

 solubility, been left behind in the whey. 



This absence of potash appears to me to be the one 

 serious objection to the free use of cheese diet The Swiss 

 peasant escapes the mischief by his abundant salads, 

 which eaten raw contain all their potash salts, instead of 

 leaving the greater part in the saucepan, a.s do cabbages, 

 <tc., when cooked in boiling water. In Norway, where 

 salads are scarce, the bonder and his housemen have at 

 times suffered greatly from scurvy, especially in the far 

 North, and would be severely victimised but for special 

 remedies that they use (the mottebeer, cranberry, (fee, 

 grown and preserved especially for the purpose. The Lap- 

 landers make a broth of scurvy-grass and similar herbs). 

 Mr. Lang attributes their recent immunity from scurvy, 

 which was once a sore plague among them, to the intro- 

 duction of the potato. 



Scurvy on board ship results from eating salt meat, the 

 potash of which has escaped by exosmosis into the brine or 

 pickle. The sailor now escapes it by driuking citrate of 

 potash in the form of lime juice, and by alternating salt 

 junk with ratious of tinned meats. 



I once lived for six days on bread and cheese only, 

 tasting no other food. I had, in company with C. M. Clay- 

 ton, son of the Senator of Delaware, who negotiated the 

 Clayton-Bulwer Treaty) taken a passage from Malta to 

 Athens in a little schooner, and expecting a three days' 

 journey we took no other rations than a lump of Cheshire 

 cheese and a supply of bread. Bad weather doubled the 

 expected length of our journey. 



We were both young, and proud of our hardihood in 

 bearing privations, were staunch disciples of Diogenes ; 

 but on the last day we succumbed, and bartered the 

 remainder of our bread and cheese for some of the boiled 

 horse-beans and cabbage-broth of the forecastle. The 

 cheese, highly relished at first, had become positively 

 nauseous, and our craving for the vegetable broth was 

 absurd, considering the full view we had of its constituents, 

 and of the dirtiness of its cooks. 



I attribute this to the lack of potash salts in the cheese 

 and bread. It was similar to the cra%-ing for common salt 

 by cattle that lack necessary chlorides in their food. I am 

 satisfied that cheese can never take the place in an economic 

 dietary, otherwise justified by its nutritious composition, 

 unless this deficiency of potash is somehow supplied. My 

 device of using it with milk as a solvent supplies it in a 

 simple and natural manner. 



THE SENSES IN INFANTS. 



{Continued from page 315.) 



WHEN we come to consider the development in infanta 

 of touch and sight, we are surprised to find, that 

 authorities are much divided in their estimate both of the 

 tactile sensibility and the powers of vision displayed by the 

 new- born infant. 



Now, in dealing with these divergent opinions, it is 

 obvious that we may either pit the various psychologists 

 against each other, and elect to put t'aitli in some rather 

 than in others on grounds of general knowledge of their 

 scientific reliability, accuracy, and so forth, or we may 

 assume that the discrepancies in recorded results are due 

 to great individual diflerences in infants, and proceed, 

 therefore, to impartially enumerate all the conflicting 

 statements. This last course being the more scientific, is 

 the one we shall adopt. 



