AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 281 



is driven off. These processes ■will not, of coxtrse, change the inherent 

 qualities of the vegetables operated upon, or make naturally poor potatoes 

 equal to good ones, treated in the same manner ; but if carefully con- 

 ducted, there will be little danger of spoiling those which are of good 

 auality when placed in the hands of the cook, as frequently happens under 

 ordinary management. 



Solon Kobinson. — I do not believe that we have ever had a question up 

 for discussion by this club of more importance than this one of food for 

 man and beast. My present remarks are upon food for man. It is not 

 how much he shall eat, or how he shall eat, but how he shall coob it. That 

 is the all-important question. "We were told at the last meeting that 

 greater variety of food, both for ourselves and domestic animals, was neces- 

 sary. Is that so ? I grant that it is agreeable to man, as well as the 

 lower animals, to have a variety, and that we eat more, but is that a 

 necessity ? We accustom ourselves to the habit of eating of a great num- 

 ber of dishes, at the same meal, and vary them at different meals, and 

 upon different days, and so consume an enormous quantity of food, and 

 then — what then ? Then we suffer and die with indigestion. And we 

 treat our animals in pretty much the same way, and as a consequence we 

 have a host of sick horses, and suffer enormous losses from diseased stock 

 of all kinds. There are no more healthy people than those who live year 

 in and year out upon one or two simple articles of food, prepared in the 

 most simple manner. For instance, the rice-eaters of the East — the French 

 and German farmer — and the negroes of our Southern States. Their 

 weekly rations, when full fed, are three and one-quarter pounds of bacon, 

 and a peck and a half of corn meal. The bacon is boiled, and the meal 

 mixed with water only, to make a dough, and is baked in the most prima- 

 tive way, and eaten with the bacon and its fat, which is boiled out, so as to 

 save all ; and the meal is seldom sifted ; and this, without change, is the 

 food of a lifetime. And it is found sufficient and wholesome. In some 

 districts meat is not given, and the negroes live month after month upon 

 sweet potatoes — nothing but sweet potatoes — consuming about six pounds 

 a day. So much as to the necessity of variety of food must suffice for this 

 meal, though I might repeat examples of simple diet without end. 



A word about cooking our food. There is where we suffer more than in 

 the variety we consume. Simplicity in cooking is at an end. That went 

 out when cooking-stoves came in. These iron monsters, that save fuel 

 and consume human life, that have driven the old wood fire and great 

 stone chimney and huge oven almost out of memory, except to a few old 

 fogies like myself, who have the hardihood to declare that no man ever 

 knew what a good roast was, whether of beef, mutton, veal, pork, goose, 

 duck, or a glorious fat turkey, who has not eaten it that was cooked before 

 a wood fire, suspended by a string, or supported by a spit resting on the 

 ponderous fire-dogs. To be sweet, nutritious, and delightful to the palate, 

 a roast must be cooked in the open air. The oxygen of the free atmos- 

 phere is just as necessary as fire to make a good roast. 



