44 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[July 18, 1884. 



because it is so pleasant to believe it. 'Tis a fancy come 

 into my head, and is very diverting." " If your folly be so 

 ■diverting," said the Marchioness," " pray make me sensible 

 of it ; provided the pleasure be so great, I will believe of 

 the stars all you would have me." "It is," said I, "a 

 diversion. Madam, I fear you will not relish, 'Tis not like 

 reading one of Moliere's plays ; 'tis a pleasure rather of the 

 fancy than of the judgment." " I hope," replied she, "you 

 <lo not think me incapable of it. Teach me your stars, I 

 •will show you the contraiy." "No, no," I reply'd, "it 

 - shall never be said I was talking philosophy at ten of the 

 clock at night to the most amiable creature in the world. 

 Find your philosophers somewhere else." 



But in vain I excused myself : who could resist such 

 chai-ms ? I was forced to yield, and yet knew not where 

 to begin ; for to a person who understood nothing of 

 natural philosophy you must go a great way about to prove 

 that the earth may be a planet, the planets so many earths, 

 and all the stars worlds. However, to give her a general 

 notion of philosophy, I at last resolved on this method. 



(To be continued.) 



THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY. 



Bv W. Mattieu Williams. 



XXXVIII.— COUNT EUMFORD'.S COOKERY. 



IN my last I referred to Rumford's anticipation of the 

 results of modern chemical analysis in his selection of 

 the materials for his economical feeding of the poor of 

 Munich ; but, as may be supposed, all his theoretical specu- 

 . lations have not been confirmed. The composition of water 

 had just been discovered, and he found by experience that 

 a given quantity of solid food was more satisfying to the 

 appetite and more eflective in nutrition when made into 

 soup by long boiling with water. This led him to suppose 

 that the water itself was decomposed by cookery, and its 

 elements reoombined or united with other elements, and 

 thus became nutritious by being converted into the tissues 

 of plants and animals. 



Thus, speaking of the barley which formed an important 

 constituent of his soup, he says, " It requires, it is true, a 

 great deal of boiling ; but when it is pi-operly managed, it 

 thickens a vast quantity of water, and, as I suppose, pre- 

 pares it for decomposition " (the italics are his own). 



We now know that this idea of decomposing water by 

 such means is a mistake ; but, in my own opinion, there is 

 something behind it which still remains to be learned by 

 modern chemists. In my endeavours to fathom the 

 ■rationale of the changes which occur in cookery, I have 

 been (as my readers will remember) continually driven into 

 hypotheses of hydration, i.e., of supposing that some of the 

 water used in cookery unites to form true chemical com- 

 pounds with certain of the constituents of the food. As 

 already stated, when I commenced this subject I had no 

 idea of its suggestiveness, of the wide field of research 

 which it has opened out. One of these lines of research is 

 the demonstration of such true chemical hydration of 

 cooked gelatine, fibrine, cellulose, casein, starch, legumin, 

 &c. That water is icith them when they are cooked is 

 evident enough, but that water is brought into actual 

 chemical combination with them in such wise as to form 

 new compounds of additional nutritive value proportionate 

 to the chemical addition of water, demands so much inves- 

 tigation, that I have been driven to merely theorise where 

 il ought to demonstrate. 



The fact that the living body which our food is building up 



and renewing contains about 80 per cent of water, some 

 of it combined, and some of it uncombined, has a notable 

 bearing on the question. We may yet learn that hydration 

 and dehydration have more to do with the vital functions 

 than has hitherto been supposed. 



The following are the ingredients used by Rumford in 

 " Soup No. 1 " :— 



Weight. 

 AvoirdapoiB. Coat, 



lb. oz. £ «. d. 



i viertels of pearl barley, equal to about 



20Jgallons ". 141 2 Oil 71 



i viertels o{ peas 131 4 7 3i 



Cuttings of fine wheaten bread 69 10 10 2i 



Salt 19 13 1 2i 



24 maass, verj- weak beer, vinegar, or 

 rather small beer turned sour, 



about 24 quarts 46 13 1 5i 



Water, about 560 quarts 1,077 — 



1485 10 1 11 9 



Fuel, 88 lb. dry pine wood 2^ 



Wages of three cook maids, at 20 florins a year each ... SJ 

 Daily expense of feeding the three cook maids, at 10 

 creutzers (3 pence j sterling) each, according to 



agreement 11 



Daily wages of two men servants 1 7t 



Repairs of kitchen furniture (90 florins per ann.) daily 5J 



Total daily expenses when dinner is provided 



for 1,200 persons 1 15 2} 



This amounts to x/uV <"■ ^ trifle more than ^ of a penny 

 for each dinner of this No. 1 soup. The cost was still 

 farther reduced by the use of the potato, then a novelty, 

 concerning which Rumford makes the following remarks, 

 now very curious. " So strong was the aversion of the 

 public, particularly the poor, against them at the time when 

 we began to make use of them in the public kitchen of the 

 House of Industry in Munich, that we were absolutely 

 obliged, at first, to introduce them by stealth. A private 

 room in a retired corner was fitted up as a kitchen for 

 cooking them ; and it was necessary to disguise them, by 

 boiling them down entirely, and destroying their form 

 and texture, to prevent their being detected." The follow- 

 ing are the ingredients of " Soup No. 2," with potatoes. : — 



Weight. 

 Avoirdupois. Coat, 



lb. cz. £ «. d. 



2 viertels of pearl barley 70 9 5 9^ | 



2 viertels of peas 65 10 3 7i 



8 viertels of potatoes 230 4 1 9^^ 



Cuttings of bread 69 10 10 2y 



Salt 19 13 1 2i 



Vinegar '. 46 13 1 5J 



Water ;; 982 15 — 



Fuel, servants, repairs, &c., as before 3 5^\ 



Total daily cost of 1,200 dinners 1 7 6J 



This reduces the cost to a little above one farthing per 

 dinner — 1 J^j exactly. 



In the essay from which the above is quoted, there is 

 another account, reducing all the items to what they would 

 cost in Loudon in November, 1795, which raises the 

 amount to 2| farthings per portion for No. 1, and 21 far- 

 things for No. 2. In this estimate the expenses for fuel, 

 servants, kitchen furniture, Ac, are three times as much as 

 the cost at Munich, and the other items at the prices 

 stated in the pi-inted report of the Board of Agriculture 

 of November 10, 1795. 



But since 1795 we have made great progress in the right 

 direction. Bread then cost one shilling per loaf, barley 

 and peas about 50 per cent, more than at present, salt is 



