466 Cookery. 
for dried chicory, weight for weight. Rye half malted, or even 
potatoes cut in small pieces, then dried to a chocolate brown, and 
mixed half and half with coffee, are a pleasant and profitable addition. 
The Arabian method of dressing their cuscus-soo, appears to 
me excellent. In a stew-pan of the size adapted to the family, 
furnished with a handle that may be taken off at pleasure, to save 
room in travelling, they put their meat, seasoned with pepper, salt^ 
spices, herbs> sesamum, turmeric, and some rice, with water suf- 
ficient to stew it. On the stew-pan, on a rim withinside about an 
inch below the top edge, rests another stew-pan that fits in close. 
The bottom of this second or upper stew-pan, is perforated with 
holes ; it is supplied with rice or other vegetables which imbibe 
and are cooked by the steam of the food below ; so that nothing is 
lost. I do not know a more convenient camp equipage, or a more 
economical machine for a poor man. I have tried it with full sa- 
tisfaction. 
Good cooking half decomposes, and therefore renders meat 
more easy of digestion, and of course more nutritious ; but this is 
not always an advantage. Labouring people frequently require 
food that is hard of digestion. It is not an advantage to them that 
the stomach should be soon empty, or the food pass away too 
easily. Hence salted meat, and cheese are favourites with them. 
I have seldom known a delicate female, whose digestion was occa- 
sionally bad, and who was occasionally hysterical, that did not re- 
quire food usually deemed indigestible, such as meat and ham for 
supper ; and with great reverence for the opinions of medical 
gentlemen, I know of no remedy better for a female, sick head- 
ach, or an hysteric fit, than a tumbler full of good hot brandy toddy, 
with nutmeg and ginger in it. Dr. Cheyne used to say, that a 
man who had so much regard for his appetite and so little regard 
for his health, as to eat ham for supper, would not stick to rob on 
the highway. I do not know that more nonsense has been given 
to the world in a moderate compass, than by physicians on the 
article of diet, from the silly remark of Dr. Cheyne, to the grave, 
common place nonsense of Dr. Willich; whose treatise on diet 
and regimen, every mistress of a family, ought to consign to her 
cook to pin on the roasting meat. He deserves a worse family 
reception, even than Mr. Twiss of notorious memory. 
There are some gleams of knowledge in Cullen’s Materia Me- 
dica, but he theorizes without fact. Whence does he derive his 
alcalescence of several kwds of meat ? He was compelled to say 
