No. 4.] NUTRITION. 63 



is found in the conversion of skimmed milk into cheese ; 

 eaten raw, it is unfit for Iiuman use, but when properly 

 cooked it is one of the most easily digested and nutritious 

 kinds of food. 



On this line I am led vip to the special subject of the 

 evening. Aside from the gross waste of food material, one 

 of our greatest wastes in this country is the waste of heat in 

 the process of cooking. More than one hundred years ago, 

 Benjamin Thompson of Massachusetts, Count Rumford, ex- 

 patriated from his own country by his Tory opinions, entered 

 the service of the king of Bavaria, by whom he was ennobled, 

 mainly for his services in the commissariat of the army and 

 of the poorer classes of the people. Yet, scientist of high 

 repute as he was, according to the standard of that time, he 

 discovered by mere accident that if a low degree of tempera- 

 ture is applied a considerable time to the cooking of meats, 

 the work will be done very much better than if it is done 

 quickly at a high temperature. Proceeding upon that line, 

 he went as far in the development of the true process of 

 applying heat to the conversion of food material into ap- 

 petizing and nutritious food as the discoveries and inventions 

 of his day permitted. Had kerosene oil or gas been placed 

 at his disposal, and had the invention of incombustible 

 materials other than metal been then perfected, he would have 

 completed his work and would have left nothing for me to 

 do. I have unwittingly repeated work which he did more 

 than a century ago, being led by the logic of the case ; and 

 I have unconsciously plagiarized upon his own words, as I 

 find on reading his works subsequently to my own publi- 

 cations. 



The whole secret in the development of the art of cooking 

 consists in the fixct that heat can be boxed up. You can hold 

 water in a tight half barrel when it is placed open end up. 

 You can hold heat in the same half barrel when it is placed 

 open end down on a metallic table with a hole in it under 

 which a lamp is placed. Being thus in possession of a 

 receptacle for heat, which may be a half barrel, or a tin-lined 

 soap box, or a paper bucket, or a box made from a quilt, like 

 this one of sea-weed and brown paper lined with binders' 

 board, or an Aladdin oven, one can retard in such a recep- 



