If the starch clings to the irons, put a little Bristol-brick on a board, and rub them up and down till free. If they are too hot for use, put in a current of air a few moments; and in all cases try them on a piece of paper or cloth before putting them on a garment. If through carelessness or accident an article is scorched, lay it in the hottest sunshine to be found. If the fiber is not burned, this will often take the spot entirely out.

Let the ironed clothes hang in the air for at least twenty-four hours after ironing. Unaired sheets have often brought on fatal sickness. Examine all clothes sent up from the wash. If the laundress is sure this inspection will take place, it is a constant spur to working in the best way, and a word of praise for good points is always a stimulus. Mending should be done as the clothes are looked over, before putting away. Place the sheets from each wash at the bottom of the pile, that the same ones may not be used over and over, but all come in rotation; and the same with table-linen. If the table-cloth in use is folded carefully in the creases, and kept under a heavy piece of plank, it will retain a fresh look till soiled. Special hints as to washing blankets and dress-materials will be given in the latter part of the book.

However carefully and neatly a house may be kept, it requires a special putting in order, known as House-cleaning, at least once a year. Spring and fall are both devoted to it in New England; and, if the matter be conducted quietly, there are many advantages in the double cleaning. In a warmer climate, where insect-life is more troublesome and the reign of flies lasts longer, two cleanings are rather a necessity. As generally managed, they are a terror to every one, and above all to gentlemen, who resent it from beginning to end. No wonder, if at the first onslaught all home comfort ends, and regular meals become irregular lunches, and a quiet night's rest something sought but not found.

A few simple rules govern here, and will rob the ordeal of half its terrors.

If coal or wood are to be laid in for the year's supply, let it be done before cleaning begins, as much dust is spread through the house in such work.

Heavy carpets do not require taking up every year; once in two, or even three, being sufficient unless they are in constant use. Take out the tacks, however, each year; fold back the carpet half a yard or so; have the floor washed with a strong suds in which borax has been dissolved,—a tablespoonful to a pail of water; then dust black pepper along the edges, and retack the carpet. By this means moths are kept away; and, as their favorite place is in corners and folds, this laying back enables one to search out and destroy them.

Sapolio is better than sand for scouring paint, and in all cases a little borax in the water makes such work easier.

Closets should be put in order first; all winter clothing packed in trunks, or put in bags made from several thicknesses of newspaper, printers' ink being one of the most effectual protections against moths. Gum-camphor is also excellent; and, if you have no camphor-wood chest or closet, a pound of the gum, sewed into little bags, will last for years. In putting away clothing, blankets, &c., look all over, and brush and shake with the utmost care before folding, in order to get rid of any possible moth-eggs.

If matting is used, wipe it with borax-water, using a cloth wet enough to dampen but not wet.

Window-glass thoroughly washed can be dried and polished with old newspapers; or whiting can be used, and rubbed off with a woolen cloth.

Hard-wood furniture, black walnut, or other varieties, requires oiling lightly with boiled linseed oil, and rubbing dry with a woolen cloth; and varnished furniture, mahogany or rosewood, if kept carefully dusted, requires only an occasional rubbing with chamois-skin or thick flannel to retain its polish perfectly. Soap should never be used on varnish of any sort.

Ingrain and other carpets, after shaking, are brightened in color by sprinkling a pound or two of salt over the surface, and sweeping carefully; and it is also useful to occasionally wipe off a carpet with borax-water, using a thick flannel, and taking care not to wet, but only dampen the carpet. Mirrors can be cleaned with whiting. Never scrub oil-pictures: simply wipe with a damp cloth, and, if picture-cord is used, wipe it off to secure against moths.

It is impossible to cover the whole ground of cleaning in this chapter. Experience is the best teacher. Only remember that a household earthquake is not necessary, and that the whole work can be done so gradually, quietly, and systematically, that only the workers need know much about it. The sense of purity transfused through the air and breathing from every nook and corner should be the only indication that upheaval has existed. The best work is always in silence.



CHAPTER VII.

THE BODY AND ITS COMPOSITION.

"The lamp of life" is a very old metaphor for the mysterious principle vitalizing nerve and muscle; but no comparison could be so apt. The full-grown adult takes in each day, through lungs and mouth, about eight and a half pounds of dry food, water, and the air necessary for breathing purposes. Through the pores of the skin, the lungs, kidneys, and lower intestines, there is a corresponding waste; and both supply and waste amount in a year to one and a half tons, or three thousand pounds.

The steadiness and clear shining of the flame of a lamp depend upon quality, as well as amount of the oil supplied, and, too, the texture of the wick; and so all human life and work are equally made or marred by the food which sustains life, as well as the nature of the constitution receiving that food.

Before the nature and quality of food can be considered, we must know the constituents of the body to be fed, and something of the process through which digestion and nutrition are accomplished.

I shall take for granted that you have a fairly plain idea of the stomach and its dependences. Physiologies can always be had, and for minute details they must be referred to. Bear in mind one or two main points: that all food passes from the mouth to the stomach, an irregularly-shaped pouch or bag with an opening into the duodenum, and from thence into the larger intestine. From the mouth to the end of this intestine, the whole may be called the alimentary canal; a tube of varying size and some thirty-six feet in length. The mouth must be considered part of it, as it is in the mouth that digestion actually begins; all starchy foods depending upon the action of the saliva for genuine digestion, saliva having some strange power by which starch is converted into sugar. Swallowed whole, or placed directly in the stomach, such food passes through the body unchanged. Each division of the alimentary canal has its own distinct digestive juice, and I give them in the order in which they occur.

First, The saliva; secreted from the glands of the mouth:—alkaline, glairy, adhesive.

Second, The gastric juice; secreted in the inner or third lining of the stomach,—an acid, and powerful enough to dissolve all the fiber and albumen of flesh food.

Third, The pancreatic juice; secreted by the pancreas, which you know in animals as sweetbreads. This juice has a peculiar influence upon fats, which remain unchanged by saliva and gastric juice; and not until dissolved by pancreatic juice, and made into what chemists call an emulsion, can they be absorbed into the system.

Fourth, The bile; which no physiologist as yet thoroughly understands. We know its action, but hardly why it acts. It is a necessity, however; for if by disease the supply be cut off, an animal emaciates and soon dies.

Fifth, The intestinal juice; which has some properties like saliva, and is the last product of the digestive forces.

A meal, then, in its passage downward is first diluted and increased in bulk by a watery fluid which prepares all the starchy portion for absorption. Then comes a still more profuse fluid, dissolving all the meaty part. Then the fat is attended to by the stream of pancreatic juice, and at the same time the bile pours upon it, doing its own work in its own mysterious way; and last of all, lest any process should have been imperfect, the long canal sends out a juice having some of the properties of all.

Thus each day's requirements call for

PINTS.

Of saliva 3-3/4 gastric juice 12 bile 3-3/4 pancreatic juice 1-1/2 intestinal juice 1/2 ———- 21-1/2

Do not fancy this is all wasted or lost. Very far from it: for the whole process seems to be a second circulation, as it were; and, while the blood is moving in its wonderful passage through veins and arteries, another circulation as wonderful, an endless current going its unceasing round so long as life lasts, is also taking place. But without food the first would become impossible; and the quality of food, and its proper digestion, mean good or bad blood as the case may be. We must follow our mouthful of food, and see how this action takes place.

When the different juices have all done their work, the chyme, which is food as it passes from the stomach into the duodenum or passage to the lower stomach or bowels, becomes a milky substance called chyle, which moves slowly, pushed by numberless muscles along the bowel, which squeeze much of it into little glands at the back of the bowels. These are called the mesenteric glands; and, as each one receives its portion of chyle, a wonderful thing happens. About half of it is changed into small round bodies called corpuscles, and they float with the rest of the milky fluid through delicate pipes which take it to a sort of bag just in front of the spine. To this bag is fastened another pipe or tube—the thoracic duct—which follows the line of the spine; and up this tube the small bodies travel till they come to the neck and a spot where two veins meet. A door in one opens, and the transformation is complete. The small bodies are raw food no more, but blood, traveling fast to where it may be purified, and begin its endless round in the best condition. For, as you know, venous blood is still impure and dirty blood. Before it can be really alive it must pass through the veins to the right side of the heart, flow through into the upper chamber, then through another door or valve into the lower, where it is pumped out into the lungs. If these lungs are, as they should be, full of pure air, each corpuscle is so charged with oxygen, that the last speck of impurity is burned up, and it goes dancing and bounding on its way. That is what health means: perfect food made into perfect blood, and giving that sense of strength and exhilaration that we none of us know half as much about as we should. We get it sometimes on mountain-tops in clear autumn days when the air is like wine; but God meant it to be our daily portion, and this very despised knowledge of cookery is to bring it about. If a lung is imperfect, supplied only with foul air as among the very poor, or diseased as in consumption, food does not nourish, and you now know why. We have found that the purest air and the purest water contain the largest proportion of oxygen; and it is this that vitalizes both food and, through food, the blood.

To nourish this body, then, demands many elements; and to study these has been the joint work of chemists and physiologists, till at last every constituent of the body is known and classified. Many as these constituents are, they are all resolved into the simple elements, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon, while a little sulphur, a little phosphorus, lime, chlorine, sodium, &c., are added.

FLESH and BLOOD are composed of water, fat, fibrine, albumen, gelatine, and the compounds of lime, phosphorus, soda, potash, magnesia, iron, &c.

BONE contains cartilage, gelatine, fat, and the salts of lime, magnesia, soda, &c., in combination with phosphoric and other acids.

CARTILAGE consists of chondrine, a substance somewhat like gelatine, and contains also the salts of sulphur, lime, soda, potash, phosphorus, magnesia, and iron.

BILE is made up of water, fat, resin, sugar, cholesterine, some fatty acids, and the salts of potash, iron, and soda.

THE BRAIN is made up of water, albumen, fat, phosphoric acid, osmazone, and salts.

THE LIVER unites water, fat, and albumen, with phosphoric and other acids, and lime, iron, soda, and potash.

THE LUNGS are formed of two substances: one like gelatine; another of the nature of caseine and albumen, fibrine, cholesterine, iron, water, soda, and various fatty and organic acids.

How these varied elements are held together, even science with all its deep searchings has never told. No man, by whatsoever combination of elements, has ever made a living plant, much less a living animal. No better comparison has ever been given than that of Youmans, who makes a table of the analogies between the human body and the steam-engine, which I give as it stands.

ANALOGIES OF THE STEAM-ENGINE AND THE LIVING BODY.

The Steam Engine in Action takes:

1. Fuel: coal and wood, both combustible.

2. Water for evaporation.

3. Air for combustion.

And Produces:

4. A steady boiling heat of 212 deg. by quick combustion.

5. Smoke loaded with carbonic acid and watery vapor.

6. Incombustible ashes.

7. Motive force of simple alternate push and pull in the piston, which, acting through wheels, bands, and levers, does work of endless variety.

8. A deficiency of fuel, water, or air, disturbs, then stops the motion.

The Animal Body in Life takes:

1. Food: vegetables and flesh, both combustible.

2. Water for circulation.

3. Air for respiration.

And Produces:

4. A steady animal heat, by slow combustion, of 98 deg..

5. Expired breath loaded with carbonic acid and watery vapor.

6. Incombustible animal refuse.

7. Motive force of simple alternate contraction and relaxation in the muscles, which, acting through joints, tendons, and levers, does work of endless variety.

8. A deficiency of food, drink, or air, first disturbs, then stops the motion and the life.

Carrying out this analogy, you will at once see why a person working hard with either body or mind requires more food than the one who does but little. The food taken into the human body can never be a simple element. We do not feed on plain, undiluted oxygen or nitrogen; and, while the composition of the human body includes really sixteen elements in all, oxygen is the only one used in its natural state. I give first the elements as they exist in a body weighing about one hundred and fifty-four pounds, this being the average weight of a full-grown man; and add a table, compiled from different sources, of the composition of the body as made up from these elements. Dry as such details may seem, they are the only key to a full understanding of the body, and the laws of the body, so far as the food-supply is concerned; though you will quickly find that the day's food means the day's thought and work, well or ill, and that in your hands is put a power mightier than you know,—the power to build up body, and through body the soul, into a strong and beautiful manhood and womanhood.

ELEMENTS OF THE HUMAN BODY.

- - - Lbs. Oz. Grs. - - - 1. Oxygen, a gas, and supporter of combustion, weighs 103 2 335 2. Carbon, a solid; found most nearly pure in charcoal. Carbon in the body combines with other elements to produce carbonic-acid gas, and by its burning sets heat free. Its weight is 18 11 150 3. Hydrogen, a gas, is a part of all bone, blood, and muscle, and weighs 4 14 0 4. Nitrogen, a gas, is also part of all muscle, blood, and bone; weighing 4 14 0 5. Phosphorus, a solid, found in brain and bones, weighs 1 12 25 6. Sulphur, a solid, found in all parts of the body, weighs 0 8 0 7. Chlorine, a gas, found in all parts of the body, weighs 0 4 150 8. Fluorine, supposed to be a gas, is found with calcium in teeth and bones, and weighs 0 3 300 9. Silicon, a solid, found united with oxygen in the hair, skin, bile, bones, blood, and saliva, weighs 0 0 14 10. Magnesium, a metal found in union with phosphoric acid in the bones 0 2 250 11. Potassium, a metal, the basis of potash, is found as phosphate and chloride; weighs 0 3 340 12. Sodium, a metal, basis of soda; weighs 0 3 217 13. Calcium, a metal, basis of lime, found chiefly in bones and teeth; weighs 3 13 190 14. Iron, a metal essential in the coloring of the blood, and found everywhere in the body; weighs 0 0 65 15. Manganese. } Faint traces of both these metals } 16. Copper metals.} are found in brain and blood, but in too minute portions to be given by weight. - - Total 154 0 0

The second table gives the combinations of these elements; and, though a knowledge of such combinations is not as absolutely essential as the first, we still can not well dispense with it. The same weight—one hundred and fifty-four pounds—is taken as the standard.

COMPOSITION OF THE BODY.

- - - Lbs. Oz. Grs. - - - 1. Water, which is found in every part of the body, and amounts to 109 0 0 2. Fibrine, and like substances, found in the blood, and forming the chief solid materials of the flesh 15 10 0 3. Phosphate of lime, chiefly in bones and teeth, but in all liquids and tissues 8 12 0

4. Fat, a mixture of three chemical compounds, and distributed all through the body 4 8 0 5. Osseine, the organic framework of bones; boiled, gives gelatine. Weight 4 7 350 6. Keratine, a nitrogenous substance, forming the greater part of hair, nails, and skin. Weighs 4 2 0 7. Cartilagine resembles the osseine of bone, and is a nitrogenous substance, the chief constituent of cartilage, weighing 1 8 0 8. Haemoglobine gives the red color to blood, and is a nitrogenous substance containing iron, and weighing 1 8 0 9. Albumen is a soluble nitrogenous substance, found in the blood, chyle, lymph, and muscle, and weighs 1 1 0 10. Carbonate of lime is found in the bones chiefly, and weighs 1 1 0 11. Hephalin is found in nerves and brain, with cerebrine and other compounds 0 13 0 12. Fluoride of calcium is found in teeth and bones, and weighs 0 7 175 13. Phosphate of magnesia is also in teeth and bones, and weighs 0 7 0 14. Chloride of sodium, or common salt, is found in all parts of the body, and weighs 0 7 0 15. Cholesterine, glycogen, and inosite are compounds containing hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon, found in muscle, liver, and brain, and weighing 0 3 0 16. Sulphate phosphate, and salts of sodium, found in all tissues and liquids 0 2 107 17. Sulphate, phosphate, and chloride of potassium, are also in all tissues and liquids 0 1 300 18. Silica, found in hair, skin, and bone 0 0 30 - - - 154 0 0

With this basis, to give us some understanding of the complicated and delicate machinery with which we must work, the question arises, what food contains all these constituents, and what its amount and character must be. The answer to this question will help us to form an intelligent plan for providing a family with the right nutrition.



CHAPTER VIII.

FOOD AND ITS LAWS.

We have found, that, in analyzing the constituents of the body, water is the largest part; and turning to food, whether animal or vegetable, the same fact holds good. It forms the larger part of all the drinks, of fruits, of succulent vegetables, eggs, fish, cheese, the cereals, and even of fats.

Fat is found in butter, lard, drippings, milk, eggs, cheese, fish, meat, the cereals, leguminous vegetables,—such as pease and beans,—nuts, cocoa, and chocolate.

Sugar abounds in fruits and vegetables, and is found in milk and cereals.

Starch, which under the action of the saliva changes into glucose or grape-sugar, is present in vegetables and cereals.

Flesh foods, called as often nitrogenous foods, from containing so large a proportion of nitrogen, are made up of fibrine, albumen, caseine, gelatine, and gluten; the first four elements being present in flesh, the latter in vegetables.

Salts of various forms exist in both animal and vegetable food. In meat, fish, and potatoes are found phosphorus, lime, and magnesia. Common salt is largely made up of soda, but is found with potash in many vegetables. This last element is also in meat, fish, milk, vegetables, and fruits. Iron abounds in flesh and vegetables; and sulphur enters into albumen, caseine, and fibrine.

The simplest division of food is into flesh-formers and heat-producers; the former being as often called nitrogenous food, or albumenoids; the latter, heat-giving or carbonaceous foods. Much minuter divisions could be made, but these two cover the ground sufficiently well. For a healthy body both are necessary, but climate and constitution will always make a difference in the amounts required. Thus, in a keen and long-continued winter, the most condensed forms of carbonaceous foods will be needed; while in summer a small portion of nitrogenous food to nourish muscle, and a large amount of cooling fruits and vegetables, are indicated; both of these, though more or less carbonaceous in character, containing so much water as to neutralize any heat-producing effects.

Muscle being the first consideration in building up a strong body, we need first to find out the values of different foods as flesh-formers, healthy flesh being muscle in its most perfect condition. Flesh and fat are never to be confounded, fat being really a species of disease,—the overloading of muscle and tissue with what has no rightful place there. There should be only enough fat to round over the muscle, but never hide its play. The table given is the one in use in the food-gallery of the South Kensington Museum, and includes not only the nutritive value, but the cost also, of each article; taking beef as the standard with which other animal foods are to be compared, beef being the best-known of all meats. Among vegetables, lentils really contain most nourishment; but wheat is chosen as being much more familiar, lentils being very little used in this country save by the German part of the population, and having so strong and peculiar a flavor that we are never likely to largely adopt their use.

About an equal amount of nourishment is found in the varied amounts mentioned in the table which follows:—

TABLE.

Cost about Eight ounces of lean beef (half-pound) 6 cts. Ten ounces of dried lentils 7 cts. Eleven ounces of pease or beans 5 cts. Twelve ounces of cocoa-nibs 20 cts. Fourteen ounces of tea 40 cts. Fifteen ounces of oatmeal 5 cts. One pound and one ounce of wheaten flour 4 cts. One pound and one ounce of coffee 30 cts. One pound and two ounces of rye-flour 5 cts. One pound and three ounces of barley 5 cts. One pound and five ounces Indian meal 5 cts. One pound and thirteen ounces of buckwheat-flour 10 cts. Two pounds of wheaten bread 10 cts. Two pounds and six ounces of rice 20 cts. Five pounds and three ounces of cabbage 10 cts. Five pounds and three ounces of onions 15 cts. Eight pounds and fifteen ounces of turnips 9 cts. Ten pounds and seven ounces of potatoes 10 cts. Fifteen pounds and ten ounces of carrots 15 cts.

Now, because tea, coffee, and cocoa approach so nearly in value as nutriment to beef and lentils, we must not be misled. Fourteen ounces of tea are equivalent to half a pound of meat; but a repast of dry tea not being very usual, in fact, being out of the question altogether, it becomes plain, that the principal value of these foods, used as we must use them, in very small quantities, is in the warmth and comfort they give. Also, these weights (except the bread) are of uncooked food. Eight ounces of meat would, if boiled or roasted, dwindle to five or six, while the ten ounces of lentils or beans would swell to twice the capacity of any ordinary stomach. So, ten pounds of potatoes are required to give you the actual benefit contained in the few ounces of meat; and only the Irishman fresh from his native cabin can calmly consider a meal of that magnitude, while, as to carrots, neither Irishman nor German, nor the most determined and enterprising American, could for a moment face the spectacle of fifteen pounds served up for his noonday meal.

The inference is plain. Union is strength, here as elsewhere; and the perfect meal must include as many of these elements as will make it not too bulky, yet borrowing flavor and substance wherever necessary.

As a rule, the food best adapted to climate and constitution seems to have been instinctively decided upon by many nations; and a study of national dishes, and their adaptation to national needs, is curious and interesting. The Esquimaux or Greenlander finds his most desirable meal in a lump of raw blubber, the most condensed form of carbonaceous food being required to preserve life. It is not a perverted taste, but the highest instinct; for in that cruel cold the body must furnish the food on which the keen air draws, and the lamp of life there has a very literal supply.

Take now the other extreme of temperature,—the East Indies, China, Africa, and part even of the West Indies and America,—and you find rice the universal food. There is very little call, as you may judge, for heat-producers, but rather for flesh-formers; and starch and sugar both fulfill this end, the rice being chiefly starch, which turns into sugar under the action of the saliva. Add a little melted butter, the East Indian ghee, or olive-oil used in the West Indies instead, and we have all the elements necessary for life under those conditions.

A few degrees northward, and the same rice is mingled with bits of fish or meat, as in the Turkish pilau, a dish of rice to which mutton or poultry is added.

The wandering Arab finds in his few dates, and handful of parched wheat or maize, the sugar and starch holding all the heat required, while his draught of mare's or camel's milk, and his occasional pilau of mutton, give him the various elements which seem sufficient to make him the model of endurance, blitheness, and muscular power. So the Turkish burden-bearers who pick up a two-hundred-pound bag of coffee as one picks up a pebble, use much the same diet, though adding melons and cucumbers, which are eaten as we eat apples.

The noticeable point in the Italian dietary is the universal and profuse use of macaroni. Chestnuts and Indian corn, the meal of which is made into a dish called polenta, something like our mush, are also used, but macaroni is found at every table, noble or peasant's. No form of wheat presents such condensed nourishment, and it deserves larger space on our own bills of fare than we have ever given it.

In Spain we find the olla podrida, a dish containing, as chief ingredient, the garbanzo or field-pea: it is a rich stew, of fowls or bacon, red peppers, and pease. Red pepper enters into most of the dishes in torrid climates, and there is a good and sufficient reason for this apparent mistake. Intense and long-continued heat weakens the action of the liver, and thus lessens the supply of bile; and red pepper has the power of stimulating the liver, and so assisting digestion. East Indian curries, and the Mexican and Spanish olla, are therefore founded on common-sense.

In France the pot-au-feu, or soup-pot, simmers in every peasant or middle-class home, and is not to be despised even in richer ones. In this dish, a small portion of meat is cooked so judiciously as to flavor a large mass of vegetables and broth; and this, served with salad and oil and bread, forms a meal which can hardly be surpassed in its power of making the most of every constituent offered. In Germany soups are a national dish also; but their extreme fondness for pork, especially raw ham and sausage, is the source of many diseases. Sweden, Norway, Russia,—all the far northern countries,—tend more and more to the oily diet of the Esquimaux, fish being a large part of it. There is no room for other illustrations; but, as you learn the properties of food, you will be able to read national dietaries, from the Jewish down, with a new understanding of what power food had and has in forming national peculiarities.

It is settled, then, that to renew our muscles which are constantly wearing out, we must eat the food containing the same constituents; and these we find in meat, milk, eggs, and the entire gluten of grains, &c, as in wheaten-grits or oatmeal.

Fat and heat must come to us from the starches and sugars, in sufficient supply to "put a layer of wadding between muscles and skin, fill out the wrinkles, and keep one warm." To find out the proportion needed for one's own individual constitution, is the first work for all of us. The laborer requires one thing, the growing child another, the man or woman whose labor is purely intellectual another; and to understand how best to meet these needs, demands a knowledge to which most of us have been indifferent. If there is excess or lack of any necessary element, that excess or lack means disease, and for such disease we are wholly responsible. Food is not the only and the universal elixir of life; for weak or poor blood is often an inheritance, and comes to one tainted by family diseases, or by defects in air or climate in general. But, even when outward conditions are most disastrous, perfect food has power to avert or alter their effects; and the child who begins life burdened with scrofulous or other diseases, and grows to a pale, weak, unwholesome youth, and either a swift passing into the next world, or a life here of hopeless invalidism, can, nine times out of ten, have this course of things stopped by scientific understanding of what foods are necessary for such conditions.

I propose to take the life of one who from babyhood up has been fed on the best food, perfectly prepared, and to give the tables of such food for different periods in that life, allowing only such digression as will show the effects of an opposite course of treatment; thus showing the relations of food to health,—a more necessary and vital form of knowledge than any other that the world owns.



CHAPTER IX.

THE RELATIONS OF FOOD TO HEALTH.

We begin, then, with a typical baby, born of civilized parents, and living in the midst of the best civilization to be had. Savage or even partially civilized life could never furnish the type we desire. It is true, as we have seen, that natural laws, so deeply planted that they have become instincts, have given to many wild nations a dietary meeting their absolute needs; but only civilization can find the key to these modes, and make past experience pay tribute to present knowledge. We do not want an Indian baby, bound and swathed like a little mummy, hanging from the pole of a wigwam, placidly sucking a fish's tail, or a bone of boiled dog; nor an Esquimaux baby, with its strip of blubber; nor the Hottentot, with its rope of jerked beef; nor the South-sea Islander, with its half-cocoanut. Nor will we admit the average Irish baby, among the laboring classes in both city and country, brought to the table at three months old to swallow its portion of coffee or tea; nor the small German, whom at six months I have seen swallowing its little mug of lager as philosophically as its serious-faced father. That these babies have fevers and rashes, and a host of diseases peculiar to that age, is a matter of course; and equally a matter of course that the round-eyed mother wonders where it got its dreadful disposition, but scorns the thought that lager or coffee can be irritants, or that the baby stomach requires but one food, and that one the universal food of all young animal life,—milk.

Take, then, our typical baby, lying fresh and sweet in the well aired and lighted room we suppose to be his birthright. The bones are still soft, the tender flesh and skin with little or no power of resistance. Muscles, nerves, all the wonderful tissues, are in process of formation; and in the strange growth and development of this most helpless yet most precious of all God's creations, there are certain elements which must be had,—phosphates to harden the delicate bones; nitrogen for flesh, which is only developed muscle; carbon,—or sugar and fat, which represent carbon,—for the whole wonderful course of respiration and circulation. Water, too, must be in abundance to fill the tiny stomach, which in the beginning can hold but a spoonful; and to float the blood-corpuscles through the winding channels whose mysteries, even now, no man has fully penetrated. Caseine, which is the solid, nourishing, cheesy part of milk, and abounds in nitrogen, is also needed; and all the salts and alkalies that we have found to be necessary in forming perfect blood. Let us see if milk will meet these wants.

COMPOSITION OF COW'S MILK.

(Supposed to contain 1,000 parts.)

Water 870.2 Caseine 44.8 Butter 31.3 Sugar 47.7 ——— Carried forward 994.0

Brought forward 994.0

Soda } Chloride of sodium and potassium} Phosphate of soda and potassa } Phosphate of lime } 6.0 Magnesia } Iron } Alkaline carbonates } ———- 1,000.0

Mother's milk being nearly the same, having only a larger proportion of water, will for the first year of our baby's life meet every demand the system can make. Even the first teeth are no sign, as ignorant mothers believe, that the stomach calls for stronger food. They are known, with reason, as milk-teeth, and the grinders delay their appearance for months afterward. A little oatmeal, bread and milk, and various porridges, come in here, that the bones may harden more rapidly; but that is all. The baby is in constant motion; and eyes and ears are taking in the mysteries of the new life, and busy hands testing properties, and little feet walking into mischief, all day. This is hardly the place to dwell upon the amount of knowledge acquired from birth to five years of age; yet when you consider how the mind is reaching in every direction, appropriating, investigating, drawing conclusions which are the foundation of all our after-knowledge, you will see that the brain is working with an intensity never afterwards equaled; and, as brain-work means actual destruction of brain-fiber, how vital it is that food should be furnished in the right ratio, and made up of the right elements!

With the coming of the grinders, and the call of the muscles and tissues for stronger food, begins the necessity for a more varied dietary. Our baby now, from two and a half to seven years of age, will require daily:—

Bread, not less than 12 ounces. Butter 1 ounce. Milk 1/2 pint. Meat 2 ounces. Vegetables 6 ounces. Pudding or gruel 6 ounces.

This table is made from the dietaries of various children's hospitals, where long experiment has settled the quantities and qualities necessary to health, or, as in these cases, recovery from sickness, at which time the appetite is always keener.

In many cases physicians who have studied the laws of food, and kept pace with modern experiments in dietetics, strike out meat altogether till the child is seven or eight years old, and allow it but once daily after this time, and in very limited amount. Sir Henry Thompson, one of the most distinguished of English physicians, and a man noted for his popularity as diner out and giver of dinners, writes strenuously against the prevailing excessive use of meat, and especially protests against its over use for children; and his opinion is shared by most thoughtful medical men. The nitrogenous vegetables advantageously take its place; and cheese, as prepared after the formulas given in Mattieu Williams's "Chemistry of Cookery," is a food the value of which we are but just beginning to appreciate.

As to quantity, with the healthy child, playing at will, there need be very little restraint. Few children will eat too much of perfectly simple food, such as this table includes. Let cake or pastry or sweetmeats enter in, and of course, as long as the thing tastes good, the child will beg for more. English children are confined to this simple diet; and though of course a less exacting climate has much to do with the greater healthfulness of the English than the American people, the plain but hearty and regular diet of childhood has far more.

Our young American of seven, at a hotel breakfast, would call for coffee and ham and eggs and sausages and hot cakes. His English cousin would have no liberty to call for anything. In fact, it is very doubtful if he would be brought to table at all; and if there, bread and milk or oatmeal and milk would form his meal.

By this time I do not doubt our baby has your heartiest pity, and you are saying, "What! no snacks? no cooky nor cake nor candy? no running to aunt or grandmother or tender-hearted cook for goodies? If that must be so, half the pleasure of childhood is lost."

Perhaps; but suppose that with that pleasure some other things are also lost. Suppose our baby to have begun life with a nervous, irritable, sensitive organization, keenly alive to pain, and this hard regimen to have covered these nerves with firm flesh, and filled the veins with clean, healthy blood. Suppose headache is unknown, and loss of appetite, and a bad taste in the mouth, and all the evils we know so well; and that work and play are easy, and food of the simplest eaten with solid satisfaction. The child would choose the pleasant taste, and let health go, naturally; for a child has small reason, and life must be ordered for it. But if the mother or father has no sense or understanding of the laws of food, it is useless to hope for the wholesome results that under the diet of our baby are sure to follow.

By seven some going to school has begun; and from this time on the diet, while of the same general character, may vary more from day to day. Habits of life are fixed during this time; and even if parents dislike certain articles of food themselves, it is well to give no sign, but as far as possible, accustom the child to eat any wholesome food. We are a wandering people, and sooner or later are very likely to have circumnavigated the globe, at least in part. Our baby must have no antipathies, but every good thing given by Nature shall at least be tolerated. "I never eat this," or "I never eat that," is a formula that no educated person has a right to use save when some food actually hurtful or to which he has a natural repulsion is presented to him. Certain articles of diet are often strangely and unaccountably harmful to some. Oysters are an almost deadly poison to certain constitutions; milk to others. Cheese has produced the same effect, and even strawberries; yet all these are luxuries to the ordinary stomach.

Usually the thing to guard against most carefully is gluttony, so far as boys are concerned. With girls the tendency often is to eat far too little. A false delicacy, a feeling that paleness and fragility are beautiful and feminine, inclines the young girl often to eat less than she desires; and the stomach accustoms itself to the insufficient supply, till the reception of a reasonable meal is an impossibility. Or if they eat improper food (hot breads and much fat and sweets), the same result follows. Digestion, or rather assimilation, is impossible; and pasty face and lusterless eyes become the rule. A greedy woman is the exception; and yet all schoolgirls know the temptation to over-eating produced by a box of goodies from home, or the stronger temptation, after a school-term has ended, to ravage all cake-boxes and preserve-jars. Then comes the pill or powder, and the habit of going to them for a relief which if no excess had been committed, would have been unnecessary. Patent medicines are the natural sequence of unwholesome food, and both are outrages on common-sense.

We will take it for granted, then, that our baby has come to boyhood and youth in blissful ignorance of their names or natures. But as we are not in the least certain what personal tastes he may have developed, or what form his life-work is to take,—whether professional or mercantile or artisan in one of the many trades,—we can now only give the regimen best adapted for each.

Supposing his tastes to be scholarly, and a college and professional career to be chosen, the time has come for slight changes in the system of diet,—very slight, however. It has become a popular saying among thinkers upon these questions, "Without phosphorus, no thinking;" and like all arbitrary utterances it has done more harm than good. The amount of phosphorus passing through the system bears no relation whatever to the intensity of thought. "A captive lion," to quote from Dr. Chambers, one of the most distinguished living authorities on diet, "a leopard, or hare, which can have wonderfully little to think about, assimilates and parts with a greater quantity of phosphorus than a professor of chemistry working hard in his laboratory; while a beaver, who always seems to be contriving something, excretes so little phosphorus that chemical analysis cannot detect it."

Phosphatic salts are demanded, but so are other salts, fat, and water; and the dietaries that order students to live upon fish, eggs, and oysters, because they are rich in phosphorus, without which the brain starves, err just so far as they make this the sole reason,—the real reason being that these articles are all easily digested, and that the student, leading an inactive muscular life, does not require the heavy, hearty food of the laborer.

The most perfect regimen for the intellectual life is precisely what would be advised for the growing boy: frequent small supplies of easily-digested food, that the stomach may never be overloaded, or the brain clouded by the fumes of half-assimilated food. If our boy trains for a foot-race, rows with the college crew, or goes in for base-ball, his power as a brain-worker at once diminishes. Strong muscular action and development hinder continuous mental work; and the literary life, as a rule, allows no extremes, demanding only mild exercise and temperance as its foundation-stones. But our boy can well afford to develop his muscular system so perfectly that his mild exercise would seem to the untrained man tolerably heavy work.

The rower in a college crew requires six weeks of training before his muscular power and endurance have reached their height. Every particle of superfluous fat must be removed, for fat is not strength, but weakness. There is a vast difference between the plumpness of good muscular development and the flabby, heavy overloading of these muscles with rolls of fat. The chest must be enlarged, that the lungs may have full play, and be capable of long-continued, extra draughts upon them; and special diet and special exercise alone can accomplish these ends. All fat-producing foods are struck out, sugar and all starchy foods coming under this head, as well as all puddings, pies, cakes, and sweets in general. Our boy, after a short run, would breakfast on lean, under-done beef or mutton, dry toast, or the crust of bread, and tea without milk or sugar; would dine on meat and a little bread and claret, and sup on more meat and toast, with cresses or some acid fruit, having rowed twice over the course in the afternoon, steadily increasing the speed, and following it by a bath and rub. At least nine hours sleep must be had; and with this diet, at the end of the training-time the muscles are hard and firm, the skin wonderfully pure and clear, and the capacity for long, steady breathing under exertion, almost unlimited. No better laws for the reduction of excessive fat can be laid down for any one.

Under such a course, severe mental exertion is impossible; and the return to it requires to be gradual. But light exercise with dumb-bells, &c., fresh air, walking, and good food are the conditions of all sound mental work, whether done by man or woman.

For the clerk or bookkeeper closely confined to desk or counter, much the same regimen is needed, with brisk exercise at the beginning and end of the day,—at least always walking rather than riding to and from the office or store; while in all the trades where hard labor is necessary, heartier food must be the rule. And for all professions or trades, the summing-up is the same: suitable food, fresh air, sunlight, and perfect cleanliness,—the following of these laws insuring the perfect use of every power to the very end.

As old age advances, the food-demand lessens naturally. Nourishing food is still necessary, but taken in much smaller quantities and more often, in order that the waning powers of the stomach may not be overtaxed. Living on such principles, work can go on till the time for work is over, and the long sleep comes as quietly as to a tired child. Simple common-sense and self-control will free one once for all from the fear, too often hanging over middle life, of a paralytic and helpless invalidism, or the long train of apoplectic symptoms often the portion even of middle life.

I omit detail as to the character and effects of tea, coffee, alcohol, &c, such details coming in the chapters on the chemistry of food.



CHAPTER X.

THE CHEMISTRY OF ANIMAL FOOD.

Animal food has a wider range than is usually included under that head. The vegetarian who announces that no animal food is allowed upon his table offers a meal in which one finds milk, eggs, butter, and cheese,—all forms of animal food, and all strongly nourishing. A genuine vegetarian, if consistent, would be forced to reject all of these; and it has already been attempted in several large water-cures by enthusiasts who have laid aside their common-sense, and resigned with it some of the most essential forces for life and work. Meat may often be entirely renounced, or eaten only at rare intervals, with great advantage to health and working power, but the dietary for the varied nourishment which seems demanded must include butter, cheese, eggs, and milk.

Meats will be regarded as essential by the majority, and naturally they come first in considering food; and beef is taken as the standard, being identical in composition with the structures of the human body.

BEEF, if properly fed, is in perfection at seven years old. It should then be a light red on the cut surface, a darker red near the bone, and slightly marbled with fat. Beef contains, in a hundred parts, nearly twenty of nitrogen, seventy-two of water, four of fat, and the remainder in salts of various descriptions. The poorer the quality of the beef, the more it will waste in cooking; and its appearance before cooking is also very different from that of the first quality, which, though looking moist, leaves no stain upon the hand. In poor beef, the watery part seems to separate from the rest, which lies in a pool of serous bloody fluid. The gravy from such beef is pale and poor in flavor; while the fat, which in healthy beef is firm and of a delicate yellow, in the inferior quality is dark yellow and of rank smell and taste. Beef is firmer in texture and more satisfying to the stomach than any other form of meat, and is usually considered more strengthening.

MUTTON is a trifle more digestible, however. A healthy person would not notice this, the digestive power in health being more than is necessary for the ordinary meal; but the dyspeptic will soon find that mutton gives his stomach less work. Its composition is very nearly the same as that of beef; and both when cooked, either by roasting or boiling, lose about a third of their substance, and come to us with twenty-seven parts of nitrogen, fifteen of fat, fifty-four of water, and three of salty matters.

Mountain sheep and cattle have the finest-flavored meat, and are also richest in nitrogenous matter. The mountain mutton of Virginia and North Carolina is as famous as the English Southdown; but proper feeding anywhere will make a new thing of the ordinary beef and mutton. When our cattle are treated with decent humanity,—not driven days with scant food and water, and then packed into cars with no food and no water, and driven at last to slaughter feverish and gasping in anguish that we have no right to permit for one moment,—we may expect tender, wholesome, well-flavored meat. It is astonishing that under present conditions it can be as good as it is.

In well-fed animals, the fat forms about a third of the weight, the largest part being in the loin. In mutton, one-half is fat; in pork, three-quarters; while poultry and game have very little.

The amount of bone varies very greatly. The loin and upper part of the leg have least; nearly half the entire weight being in the shin, and a tenth in the carcass. In the best mutton and pork, the bones are smaller, and fat much greater in proportion to size.

VEAL and LAMB, like all young meats, are much less digestible than beef or mutton. Both should have very white, clear fat; and if that about the kidneys is red or discolored, the meat should be rejected. Veal has but sixteen parts of nitrogenous matter to sixty-three of water, and the bones contain much more gelatine than is found in older animals. But in all bones much useful carbon and nitrogen is found; three pounds of bone yielding as much carbon, and six pounds as much nitrogen, as one pound of meat. Carefully boiled, this nutriment can all be extracted, and flavored with vegetables, form the basis of an endless variety of soups.

PORK is of all meats the most difficult to digest, containing as it does so large a proportion of fat. In a hundred parts of the meat, only nine of nitrogen are found, fat being forty-eight and water thirty-nine, with but two of salty matters. Bacon properly cured is much more digestible than pork, the smoke giving it certain qualities not existing in uncured pork. No food has yet been found which can take its place for army and navy use or in pioneering. Beef when salted or smoked loses much of its virtue, and eight ounces of fat pork will give nearly three times as much carbon or heat-food as the same amount of beef; but its use is chiefly for the laborer, and it should have only occasional place in the dietary of sedentary persons.

The pig is liable to many most unpleasant diseases, measles and trichina spiralis being the most fatal to the eaters of meat thus affected; but the last—a small animalcule of deadly effect if taken alive into the human stomach, as is done in eating raw ham or sausage—becomes harmless if the same meat is long and thoroughly boiled. Never be tempted into eating raw ham or sausage; and in using pork in any form, try to have some knowledge of the pig. A clean, well-fed pig in a well-kept stye is a wonderfully different object from the hideous beast grunting its way in many a Southern or Western town, feeding on offal and sewage, and rolling in filth. Such meat is unfit for human consumption, and the eating of it insures disease.

We come now to another form of meat, that of edible ENTRAILS. This includes Tripe, Haslet, or lights, &c. More nitrogen is found here than in any other portion of the meat. The cheap and abundant supply in this country has made us, as a people, reject all but the liver. In the country, the sweetbreads or pancreas are often thrown away, and tripe also. The European peasant has learned to utilize every scrap; and while such use should not be too strongly urged, it is certain that this meat is far better than no meat. Fully one-third of the animals' weight comes under this head,—that is, feet, tail, head, and tongue, lungs, liver, spleen, omentum, pancreas, and heart, together with the intestines. The rich man is hardly likely to choose much of this food, the tongue and sweetbreads being the only dainty bits; but there are wholesome and savory dishes to be made from every part, and the knowledge of their preparation may be of greatest value to a poorer neighbor. Both ox-tails and head make excellent soup. Tripe, the inner lining of the stomach, is, if properly prepared, not only appetizing but pleasant to the eye. Calves' feet make good jelly; and pigs' feet, ears, and head are soused or made into scrapple. Blood-puddings are much eaten by Germans, but we are not likely to adopt their use. Fresh blood has, however, been found of wonderful effect for consumptive patients; and there are certain slaughter-houses in our large cities where every day pale invalids are to be found waiting for the goblet of almost living food from the veins of the still warm animal. Horrible as it seems, the taste for it is soon acquired; and certainly the good results warrant at least the effort to acquire it.

VENISON comes next in the order of meats, but is more like game than any ordinary butchers' meat. It is lean, dark in color, and savory, and if well cooked, very digestible.

POULTRY are of more importance to us than game, and the flesh, containing less nitrogen, is not so stimulating as beef or mutton. Old fowls are often tough and indigestible, and have often, also, a rank flavor like a close hen-house, produced by the absorption into the flesh of the oil intended by nature to lubricate the feathers.

GAME contains even less fat than poultry, and is considered more strengthening. The flesh of rabbits and hares is more like poultry or game than meat, but is too close in fiber to be as digestible. Pigeons and many other birds come under none of the heads given. As a rule, flesh is tender in proportion to the smallness of the animal, and many varieties are eaten for the description of which we have no room here.

FISH forms the only animal food for a large part of the world. It does not possess the satisfying or stimulating properties belonging to flesh, yet the inhabitants of fishing-towns are shown to be unusually strong and healthy. The flesh of some fish is white, and of others red; the red holding much more oil, and being therefore less digestible. In Salmon, the most nutritious of all fishes, there are, in a hundred parts, sixteen of nitrogen, six of fat, nearly two of saline matter, and seventy-seven of water. Eels contain thirteen parts of fat. Codfish, the best-known of all the white fish, vary greatly, according to the time of year in which they are taken, being much more digestible in season than out (i.e., from October to May). Mackerel and Herring both abound in oil, the latter especially, giving not only relish to the Irishman's potato, but the carbon he needs as heat-food. Shell-fish are far less digestible, the Oyster being the only exception. The nitrogenous matter in oysters is fourteen parts, of fatty matter one and a half, of saline matter two, and of water eighty. At the time of spawning—from May to September—they lose their good condition, and become unwholesome. Lobsters rank next in importance, and are more delicate and finer-flavored than Crabs. Both are, however, very difficult of digestion, and should only be used occasionally. The many forms of pickled and smoked fish are convenient, but always less wholesome than fresh.

MILK comes next, and has already been considered in a previous chapter. It is sometimes found to disagree with the stomach, but usually because looked upon as drink and not as real food, the usual supply of which is taken, forgetful of the fact that a glass or two of milk contains as much nourishment as two-thirds of the average meal. The nitrogenous matter in milk is known as caseine, and it is this which principally forms cheese.

CHEESE is commonly considered only a relish, but is in reality one of the most condensed forms of nitrogenous food; and a growing knowledge of its value has at last induced the Army Department to add it to the army ration list. Mattieu Williams, after giving the chemical formulas of caseine and the other elements of cheese, writes; "I have good and sufficient reasons for thus specifying the properties of this constituent of food. I regard it as the most important of all that I have to describe in connection with my subject,—The Science of Cookery. It contains, as I shall presently show, more nutritious material than any other food that is ordinarily obtainable, and its cookery is singularly neglected,—practically an unknown art, especially in this country. We commonly eat it raw, although in its raw state it is peculiarly indigestible, and in the only cooked form familiarly known among us here, that of Welsh rabbit or rare-bit, it is too often rendered still more indigestible, though this need not be the case. Cream-cheese is the richest form, but keeps less well than that of milk. Stilton, the finest English brand, is made partly of cream, partly of milk, and so with various other foreign brands, Gruyere, &c. Parmesan is delicately flavored with fine herbs, and retains this flavor almost unaltered by age. Our American cheeses now rank with the best foreign ones, and will grow more and more in favor as their value is understood, this being their strongly nitrogenous character. A cheese of twenty pounds weight contains as much food as a sheep weighing sixty pounds, as it hangs in the butcher's shop. In Dutch and factory cheeses, where the curd has been precipitated by hydrochloric acid, the food value is less than where rennet is used; but even in this case, it is far beyond meat in actual nutritive power."

BUTTER is a purely carbonaceous or heat-giving food, being the fatty part of the milk, which rises in cream. It is mentioned in the very earliest history, and the craving for it seems to be universal. Abroad it is eaten without salt; but to keep it well, salt is a necessity, and its absence soon allows the development of a rank and unpleasant odor. In other words, butter without it becomes rancid; and if any particle of whey is allowed to remain in it, the same effect takes place.

Perfect butter is golden in color, waxy in consistency, and with a sweetness of odor quite indescribable, yet unmistakable to the trained judge of butter. It possesses the property of absorption of odors in a curious degree; and if shut in a tight closet or a refrigerator with fish, meat, or vegetables of rank or even pronounced smell, exchanges its own delicate aroma for theirs, and reaches us bereft once for all of what is the real charm of perfect butter. For this reason absolute cleanliness and daintiness of vessels containing milk or cream, or used in any way in the manufacture of butter, is one of the first laws of the dairy.

Ghee, the East-Indian form of butter, is simply fresh butter clarified by melting, and is used as a dressing for the meal of rice. Butter, though counted as a pure fat, is in reality made up of at least six fatty principles, there being sixty-eight per cent of margarine and thirty per cent of oleine, the remainder being volatile compounds of fatty acids. In the best specimens of butter there is a slight amount of caseine, not over five per cent at most, though in poor there is much more. It is the only fat which may be constantly eaten without harm to the stomach, though if not perfectly good it becomes an irritant.

The Drippings of roasted meat, more especially of beef, rank next in value; and Lard comes last on the list, its excessive use being a serious evil. Eaten constantly, as in pastry or the New-England doughnut, it is not only indigestible, but becomes the source of forms of scrofulous disease. It is often a convenient substitute for butter, but if it must be used, would better be in connection with the harmless fat.

Eggs come last; and as a young animal is developed from them, it follows that they contain all that is necessary for animal life, though in the case of the chicken the shell also is used, all the earthy matter being absorbed. In a hundred parts are found fourteen of nitrogen, ten and a half of fatty matter, one and a half of saline matter, and seventy-four of water. Of this water the largest part is contained in the white, which is almost pure albumen, each particle of albumen being enclosed in very thin-walled cells; it is the breaking of these cells and the admission of air that enables one to beat the white of egg to a stiff froth. The fat is accumulated in the yolk, often amounting to thirty per cent. Raw and lightly-boiled eggs are easy of digestion, but hard-boiled ones decidedly not so. An egg loses its freshness within a day or so. The shell is porous; and the always-feeding and destroying oxygen of the air quickly gains admission, causing a gradual decomposition. To preserve them, they must be coated with lard or gum, or packed in either salt or oats, points down. In this way they keep good a long time, and while hardly desirable to eat as boiled eggs, answer for many purposes in cooking.



CHAPTER XI.

THE CHEMISTRY OF VEGETABLE FOOD.

We come now to the vegetable kingdom, the principal points that we are to consider arranging themselves somewhat as follows:—

Farinaceous seeds, Oleaginous seeds, Leguminous seeds, Tubers and roots, Herbaceous articles, Fruits, Saccharine and farinaceous preparations.

Under the first head, that of farinaceous seeds, are included wheat, rye, oats, Indian corn, rice, and a variety of less-known grains, all possessing in greater or less degree the same constituents. It will be impossible to more than touch upon many of them; and wheat must stand as the representative, being the best-known and most widely used of all grains. Each one is made up of nitrogenous compounds, gluten, albumen, caseine, and fibrine, gluten being the most valuable. Starch, dextrine, sugar, and cellulose are also found; fatty matter, which gives the characteristic odor of grain; mineral substances, as phosphates of lime and magnesia, salts of potash and soda, and silica, which we shall shortly mention again.

Hard Wheat, or that grown in hot climates and on fertile soil, has much more nitrogen than that of colder countries. In hard wheat, in a hundred parts, twenty-two will be of nitrogen, fifty-nine starch, ten dextrine, &c, four cellulose, two and a half of fatty matter, and three of mineral, thus giving many of the constituents found in animal food.

This wheat is taken as bread, white or brown, biscuits, crackers, various preparations of the grain whether whole or crushed, and among the Italians as macaroni, the most condensed form of cereal food. The best macaroni is made from the red wheat grown along the Mediterranean Sea, a hot summer and warm climate producing a grain, rich, as already mentioned, in nitrogen, and with a smaller proportion of water than farther north. The intense though short summer of our own far North-west seems to bring somewhat the same result, but the outer husk is harder. This husk was for years considered a necessity in all really nutritious bread; and a generation of vegetarians taking their name from Dr. Graham, and known as Grahamites, conceived the idea of living upon the wheaten flour in which husk and kernel were ground together. Now, to stomachs and livers brought to great grief by persistent pie and doughnuts and some other New-England wickednesses, these husks did a certain office of stimulation, stirring up jaded digestions, and really seeming to arrest or modify long-standing dyspepsia. But they did not know what we do, that this outer husk is a layer of pure silica, one of the hardest of known minerals. Boil it six weeks, and it comes out unchanged. Boil it six years, or six centuries, and the result would be the same. You can not stew a grindstone or bring granite to porridge, and the wheat-husk is equally obstinate. So long as enthusiasts ate husk and kernel ground together, little harm was done. But when a more progressive soul declared that in bran alone the true nutriment lay, and a host of would-be healthier people proceeded to eat bran and preach bran, there came a time when eating and preaching both stopped, from sheer want of strength to go on. The enthusiasts were literally starving themselves to death—for starvation is by no means mere deprivation of food: on the contrary, a man may eat heartily to the day of his death, and feel no inconvenience, so far as any protest of the stomach is concerned, yet the verdict of the wise physician would be, "Died of starvation." If the food was unsuitable, and could not be assimilated, this was inevitable. Blood, muscle, nerve—each must have its fitting food; and thus it is easy to see why knowledge is the first condition of healthful living. The moral is: Never rashly experiment in diet till sure what you are about, and, if you can not for yourselves find out the nature of your projected food, call upon some one who can.

Where wheat is ground whole, it includes six and a half parts of heat-producers to one of flesh-formers. The amount of starch varies greatly. Two processes of making flour are now in use,—one the old, or St. Louis process; the other, the "new process," giving Haxall flour. In the former, grindstones were used, which often reached so great a degree of heat as to injure the flour; and repeated siftings gave the various grades. In the new, the outer husk is rejected, and a system of knives is used, which chop the grain to powder, and it is claimed do not heat it. The product is more starchy, and for this reason less desirable. We eat far too much heat-producing food, and any thing which gives us the gluten of the grain is more wholesome, and thus "seconds" is really a more nutritious flour than the finer grades. Try for yourselves a small experiment, and you will learn the nature of flour better than in pages of description.

Take a little flour; wet it with cold water enough to form a dough. Place it on a sieve, and, while working it with one hand, pour a steady stream of water over it with another. Shortly you will find a grayish, tough, elastic lump before you, while in the pan below, when the water is carefully poured off, will be pure wheat-starch, the water itself containing all the sugar, dextrine or gum, and mineral matter. This toughness and elasticity of gluten is an important quality; for in bread-making, were it not for the gluten, the carbonic-acid gas formed by the action of yeast on dough would all escape. But, though it works its way out vigorously enough to swell up each cell, the gluten binds it fast, and enables us to have a panful of light "sponge," where a few hours before was only a third of a pan.

Starch, as you have seen, will not dissolve in the cold water. Dry it, after the water is poured on, and minute grains remain. Look at these grains under a microscope, and each one is cased in a thick skin, which cold water can not dissolve. In boiling water, the skins crack, and the inside swells and becomes gummy. Long boiling is thus an essential for all starchy foods.

Bread proper is simply flour, water, and salt, mixed to a firm dough and baked. Such bread as this, Abram gave to his angelic guests, and at this day the Bedouin Arab bakes it on his heated stone. But bread, as we understand it, is always lightened by the addition of yeast or some form of baking-powder, yeast making the most wholesome as well as most palatable bread. Carbonic-acid gas is the active agent required; and yeast so acts upon the little starch-granules, which the microscope shows as forming the finest flour, that this gas is formed and evenly distributed through the whole dough. The process is slow, and in the action some of the natural sweetness of the flour is lost. In what is known as aerated bread, the gas made was forced directly into the dough, by means of a machine invented for the purpose; and a very scientific and very good bread it is. But it demands an apparatus not to be had save at great expense, and the older fashions give a sufficiently sweet and desirable bread.

Rye and Indian Corn form the next best-known varieties of flour in bread-making; but barley and oats are also used, and beans, pease, rice, chestnuts, in short, any farinaceous seed, or legume rich in starch, can fill the office.

Oatmeal may take rank as one of the best and most digestible forms of farinaceous food. Some twenty-eight per cent of the grain is husk, seventy-two being kernel; and this kernel forms a meal containing twelve parts of nitrogenous matter, sixty-three of carbo-hydrates, five and a half of fatty matter, three of saline, and fifteen of water. So little gluten is found, that the flour of oats can not be made into loaves of bread; although, mixed and baked as thin cakes, it forms a large part of the Scotchman's food. It requires thorough cooking, and is then slightly laxative and very easily digested.

Buckwheat is very rich in nitrogenous substances, and as we eat it, in the form of cakes with butter and sirup, so heating a food, as to be only suitable for hard workers in cold weather.

Indian corn has also a very small proportion of gluten, and thus makes a bread which crumbles too readily. But it is the favorite form of bread, not only for South and West in our own country, but in Spanish America, Southern Europe, Germany, and Ireland. It contains a larger amount of fatty matter than any other grain, this making it a necessity in fattening animals. In a hundred parts are eleven of nitrogen, sixty-five of carbo-hydrates, eight of fatty matter, one and a half of saline, and fourteen of water. The large amount of fatty matter makes it difficult to keep much meal on hand, as it grows rancid and breeds worms; and it is best that it should be ground in small quantities as required.

Rice abounds in starch. In a hundred parts are found seven and a half of nitrogen, eighty-eight of starch, one of dextrine, eight-tenths of fatty matter, one of cellulose, and nine-tenths of mineral matter. Taken alone it can not be called a nutritive food; but eaten with butter or milk and eggs, or as by the East Indians in curry, it holds an important place.

We come now to OLEAGINOUS SEEDS; nuts, the cocoanut, almonds, &c, coming under this head. While they are rich in oil, this very fact makes them indigestible, and they should be eaten sparingly.

Olive-oil must find mention here. No fat of either the animal or vegetable kingdom surpasses this in delicacy and purity. Palm-oil fills its place with the Asiatics in part; but the olive has no peer in this respect, and we lose greatly in our general distaste for this form of food. The liking for it should be encouraged as decidedly as the liking for butter. It is less heating, more soothing to the tissues, and from childhood to old age its liberal use prevents many forms of disease, as well as equalizes digestion in general.

LEGUMINOUS SEEDS are of more importance, embracing as they do the whole tribe of beans, pease, and lentils. Twice as much nitrogen is found in beans as in wheat; and they rank so near to animal food, that by the addition of a little fat they practically can take its place. Bacon and beans have thus been associated for centuries, and New England owes to Assyria the model for the present Boston bean-pot. In the best table-bean, either Lima or the butter-bean, will be found in a hundred parts, thirty of nitrogen, fifty-six of starch, one and a half of cellulose, two of fatty matter, three and a half of saline, and eight and a half of water. The proportion of nitrogen is less in pease, but about the same in lentils. The chestnut also comes under this head, and is largely eaten in Spain and Italy, either boiled, or dried and ground into flour.

TUBERS and ROOTS follow, and of these the Potato leads the van. Low as you may have noticed their standing on the food-table to be, they are the most economical and valuable of foods, combining as well with others, and as little cloying to the palate, as bread itself. Each pound of potatoes contains seven hundred and seventy grains of carbon, and twenty-four grains of nitrogen; each pound of wheat-flour, two thousand grains of carbon, and one hundred and twenty of nitrogen. But the average cost of the pound of potatoes is but one cent; that of the pound of wheat, four. It is obtainable at all seasons, and thus invaluable as a permanent store, though best in the winter. Spring, the germinating season, diminishes its nutritive value. New potatoes are less nutritious than older ones, and in cooking, if slightly underdone, are said to satisfy the appetite better; this being the reason why the laboring classes prefer them, as they say, "with a bone in them."

In a hundred parts are found but two of nitrogen, eighteen of starch, three of sugar, two-tenths of fat, seven-tenths of saline matter, and seventy-five parts of water. The Sweet-potato, Yam, and Artichoke are all of the same character. Other Tubers, the Turnip, Beet, Carrot, and Parsnip, are in ordinary use. The turnip is nine-tenths water, but possesses some valuable qualities. The beet, though also largely water, has also a good deal of sugar, and is excellent food. Carrots and parsnips are much alike in composition. Carrots are generally rejected as food, but properly cooked are very appetizing, their greatest use, however, being in soups and stews.

HERBACEOUS ARTICLES follow; and, though we are not accustomed to consider Cabbage as an herb, it began existence as cole-wort, a shrub or herb on the south coast of England. Cultivation has developed it into a firm round head; and as a vegetable, abounding as it does in nitrogen, it ranks next to beans as a food. Cauliflower is a very delicate and highly prized form of cabbage, but cabbage itself can be so cooked as to strongly resemble it.

Onions are next in value, being much milder and sweeter when grown in a warm climate, but used chiefly as a flavoring. Lettuce and Celery are especially valuable; the former for salads, the latter to be eaten without dressing though it is excellent cooked. Tomatoes are really a fruit, though eaten as a vegetable, and are of especial value as a cooling food. Egg-plant, cucumbers, &c., all demand space; and so with edible fungi, mushrooms, and truffles, the latter the property of the epicure, and really not so desirable as that fact would indicate.

FRUITS are last in order; and among these stands first of all the apple. While in actual analysis fruits have less nutritive value than vegetables, their acids and salts give to them the power of counteracting the unhealthy states brought about by the long use of dried or salted provisions. They are a corrective also of the many evils arising from profuse meat-eating, the citric acid of lemons and grape-fruit being an antidote to rheumatic and gouty difficulties. Cold storage now enables one to command grapes long after their actual season has ended, and they are invaluable food. The brain-worker is learning to depend more and more on fruit in all its forms; and apples lead the list, containing more solid nutriment than any other form. While considered less digestible raw than baked, they are still one of the most attractive, life-giving forms of food, and if eaten daily would prove a standard antidote to patent medicine. The list of fruits is too long for mention here; but all have their specific uses, and are necessary to perfect health.

SUGAR and HONEY follow in the stores of the vegetable kingdom. Cane-sugar and glucose, or grape-sugar, are the two recognized varieties, though the making of beet-sugar has become an industry here as well as in France. Grape-sugar requires to be used in five times the amount of cane, to secure the same degree of sweetness. Honey also is a food,—a concentrated solution of sugar, mixed with odorous, gummy, and waxy matters. It possesses much the same food value as sugar, and is easily digested.

With the various FARINACEOUS PREPARATIONS, Sago, Tapioca, Arrow-root, &c, the vegetable dietary ends. All are light, digestible foods, principally starchy in character, but with little nutriment unless united with milk or eggs. Their chief use is in the sick-room.

Restricted as comment must be, each topic introduced will well reward study; and the story of each of these varied ingredients in cookery, if well learned, will give one an unsuspected range of thought, and a new sense of the wealth that may be hidden in very common things.



CHAPTER XII.

CONDIMENTS AND BEVERAGES.

Condiments are simply seasoning or flavoring agents, and, though hardly coming under the head of food, yet have an important part to play. As food by their use is rendered more tempting, a larger amount is consumed, and thus a delicate or uncertain appetite is often aided. In some cases they have the power of correcting the injurious character of some foods.

Salt stands foremost. Vinegar, lemon-juice, and pickles owe their value to acidity; while mustard, pepper black and red, ginger, curry-powder, and horse-radish all depend chiefly upon pungency. Under the head of aromatic condiments are ranged cinnamon, nutmegs, cloves, allspice, mint, thyme, fennel, sage, parsley, vanilla, leeks, onions, shallots, garlic, and others, all of them entering into the composition of various sauces in general use.

Salt is the one thing indispensable. The old Dutch law condemned criminals to a diet of unsalted food, the effects being said to be those of the severest physical torture. Years ago an experiment tried near Paris demonstrated the necessity of its use. A number of cattle were fed without the ration of salt; an equal number received it regularly. At the end of a specified time, the unsalted animals were found rough of coat, the hair falling off in spots, the eyes wild, and the flesh hardly half the amount of those naturally fed.

A class of extreme Grahamites in this country decry the use of salt, as well as of any form of animal food; and I may add that the expression of their thought in both written and spoken speech is as savorless as their diet.

Salt exists, as we have already found, in the blood: the craving for it is a universal instinct, even buffaloes making long journeys across the plains to the salt-licks; and its use not only gives character to insipid food, but increases the flow of the gastric juice.

Black pepper, if used profusely as is often done in American cooking, becomes an irritant, and produces indigestion. Red pepper, or cayenne, on the contrary, is a useful stimulant at times; but, as with mustard, any over-use irritates the lining of the stomach.

So with spices and sweet herbs. There should be only such use of them as will flavor well, delicately, and almost imperceptibly. No one flavor should predominate, and only a sense of general savoriness rule. Extracts, as of vanilla, lemon, bitter almond, &c., should be used with the greatest care, and if possible always be added to an article after it cools, as the heat wastes the strength.

BEVERAGES.

Tea and coffee are the most universal drinks, after water. The flavor of both is due to a principle, theine in tea, caffeine in coffee, in which both the good and the ill effects of these drinks are bound up. It is hardly necessary the principles should have different names, as they have been found by chemists to be identical; the essential spirit of cocoa and chocolate,—theobromine,—though not identical, having many of the same properties.

Tea is valuable chiefly for its warming and comforting qualities. Taken in moderation, it acts partly as a sedative, partly as a stimulant, arresting the destruction of tissue, and seeming to invigorate the whole nervous system. The water in it, even if impure, is made wholesome by boiling, and the milk and sugar give a certain amount of real nourishment. Nervous headaches are often cured by it, and it has, like coffee, been used as an antidote in opium-poisoning.

Pass beyond the point of moderation, and it becomes an irritant, precisely in the same way that an overdose of morphine will, instead of putting to sleep, for just so much longer time prevent any sleep at all. The woman who can not eat, and who braces her nerves with a cup of green tea,—the most powerful form of the herb,—is doing a deeper wrong than she may be able to believe. The immediate effect is delightful. Lightness, exhilaration, and sense of energy are all there; but the re-action comes surely, and only a stronger dose next time accomplishes the end desired. Nervous headaches, hysteria in its thousand forms, palpitations, and the long train of nervous symptoms, own inordinate tea and coffee drinking as their parent. Taken in reasonable amounts, tea can not be said to be hurtful; and the medium qualities, carefully prepared, often make a more wholesome tea than that of the highest price, the harmful properties being strongest in the best. If the water is soft, it should be used as soon as boiled, boiling causing all the gases which give flavor to water to escape. In hard water, boiling softens it. In all cases the water must be fresh, and poured boiling upon the proper portion of tea,—the teapot having first been well scalded with boiling water. Never boil any tea but English-breakfast tea; for all others, simple steeping gives the drink in perfection.

A disregard of these rules gives one the rank, black, unpleasant infusion too often offered as tea; while, if boiled in tin, it becomes a species of slow poison,—the tannic acid in the tea acting upon the metal, and producing a chemical compound whose character it is hard to determine. Various other plants possess the essential principle of tea, and are used as such; as in Paraguay, where the Brazilian holly is dried, and makes a tea very exhilarating in quality, but much more astringent.

The use of Coffee dates back even farther than that of tea. Of the many varieties, Mocha and Java are finest in flavor, and a mixture of one-third Mocha with two-thirds Java gives the drink at its best. As in tea, there are three chief constituents: (1) A volatile oil, giving the aroma it possesses, but less in amount than that in tea. (2) Astringent matter,—a modification of tannin, but also less than in tea. (3) Caffeine, now found identical with theine, but varying in amount in different varieties of coffee,—being in some three or four per cent, in others less.

The most valuable property of coffee is its power of relieving the sensation of hunger and fatigue. To the soldier on active service, nothing can take its place; and in our own army it became the custom often, not only to drink the infusion, but, if on a hard march, to eat the grounds also. In all cases it diminishes the waste of tissue. In hot weather it is too heating and stimulating, acting powerfully upon the liver, and, by producing over-activity of that organ, bringing about a general disturbance.

So many adulterations are found in ground coffee, that it is safest for the real coffee-lover to buy the bean whole. Roasting is usually more perfectly done at the grocers', in their rotary roasters, which give every grain its turn; but, by care and constant stirring, it can be accomplished at home. Too much boiling dissipates the delicious aroma we all know; and the best methods are considered to be those which allow no boiling, after boiling water has been poured upon it, but merely a standing, to infuse and settle. The old fashion, however, of mixing with an egg, and boiling a few minutes, makes a coffee hardly inferior in flavor. In fact, the methods are many, but results, under given conditions, much the same; and we may choose urn, or old-fashioned tin pot, or a French biggin, with the certainty that good coffee, well roasted, boiling water, and good judgment as to time, will give always a delicious drink. Make a note of the fact that long boiling sets free tannic acid, powerful enough to literally tan the coats of the stomach, and bring on incurable dyspepsia. Often coffee without milk can be taken, where, with milk, it proves harmful; but, in all cases, moderation must rule. Taken too strong, palpitation of the heart, vertigo, and fainting are the usual consequences.

Cocoa, or, literally, cacao, from the cacao-tree, comes in the form of a thick seed, twenty or thirty of which make up the contents of a gourd-like fruit, the spaces between being filled with a somewhat acid pulp. The seeds, when freed from this pulp by various processes, are first dried in the sun, and then roasted; and from these roasted seeds come various forms of cocoa.

Cocoa-shells are the outer husk, and by long boiling yield a pleasant and rather nutritious drink. Cocoa itself is the nut ground to powder, and sometimes mixed with sugar, the husk being sometimes ground with it.

In Chocolate—a preparation of cocoa—the cocoa is carefully dried and roasted, and then ground to a smooth paste, the nuts being placed on a hot iron plate, and so keeping the oily matter to aid in forming a paste. Sugar and flavorings, as vanilla, are often added, and the whole pressed into cakes. The whole substance of the nut being used, it is exceedingly nutritious, and made more so by the milk and sugar added. Eaten with bread it forms not only a nourishing but a hearty meal; and so condensed is its form, that a small cake carried in traveling, and eaten with a cracker or two, will give temporarily the effect of a full meal.

In a hundred parts of chocolate are found forty-eight of fatty matter or cocoa-butter, twenty-one of nitrogenous matter, four of theobromine, eleven of starch, three of cellulose, three of mineral matter, and ten of water; there being also traces of coloring matter, aromatic essence, and sugar. Twice as much nitrogenous, and twenty-five times as much fatty matter as wheaten flour, make it a valuable food, though the excess of fat will make it disagree with a very delicate stomach.

Alcohol is last upon our list, and scientific men are still uncertain whether or not it can in any degree be considered as a food; but we have no room for the various arguments for and against. You all know, in part at least, the effects of intemperance; and even the moderate daily drinker suffers from clouded mind, irritable nerves, and ruined digestion.

This is not meant as an argument for total abstinence; but there are cases where such abstinence is the only rule. In an inherited tendency to drink, there is no other safe road; but to the man or woman who lives by law, and whose body is in the best condition, wine in its many forms is a permissible occasional luxury, and so with beer and cider and the wide range of domestic drinks. In old age its use is almost essential, but always in moderation, individual temperament modifying every rule, and making the best knowledge an imperative need. A little alcoholic drink increases a delicate appetite: a great deal diminishes or takes it away entirely, and also hinders and in many cases stops digestion altogether. In its constant over-use the membranes of the stomach are gradually destroyed, and every organ in the body suffers. In ales and beers there is not only alcohol, but much nitrogenous and sugary matter, very fattening in its nature. A light beer, well flavored with hops, is an aid to digestion, but taken in excess produces biliousness. The long list of alcoholic products it is not necessary to give, nor is it possible to enter into much detail regarding alcohol itself; but there are one or two points so important that they can not be passed by.

You will recall in a preceding chapter the description of the circulation of the blood, and of its first passage through veins and arteries for cleansing, before a second round could make it food for the whole complex nervous system. Alcohol taken in excess, it has been proved in countless experiments by scientific men, possesses the power of coagulating the blood. The little corpuscles adhere in masses, and cannot force themselves through the smaller vessels, and circulation is at once hindered. This, however, is the secondary stage. At first, as many of you have had occasion to notice, the face flushes, the eyes grow brighter, and thought and word both come more freely. The heart beats far more rapidly, and the speed increases in proportion to the amount of alcohol absorbed. The average number of beats of the heart, allowing for its slower action during sleep, is 100,000 beats per day. Under a small supply of alcohol this rose to 127,000, and in actual intoxication to 131,000.

The flush upon the cheek is only a token of the same fact within; every organ is congested. The brain has been examined under such circumstances, and "looked as if injected with vermilion ... the membrane covering both brains resembling a delicate web of coagulated red blood, so tensely were its fine vessels engorged."

At a later stage the muscular power is paralyzed, the rule of mind over body suspended, and a heavy, brutal sleep comes, long or short according to the amount taken. This is the extreme of alcoholism, and death the only ending to it, as a habitual condition. Alcohol seems a necessary evil; for that its occasional beneficence can modify or neutralize the long list of woe and crime and brutality following in its train, is more than doubtful.

"Whatever good can come from alcohol, or whatever evil, is all included in that primary physiological and luxurious action of the agent upon the nervous supply of the circulation.... If it be really a luxury for the heart to be lifted up by alcohol, for the blood to course more swiftly through the brain, for the thoughts to flow more vehemently, for words to come more fluently, for emotions to rise ecstatically, and for life to rush on beyond the pace set by nature; then those who enjoy the luxury must enjoy it—with the consequences."

And now, at the end of our talks together, friends, there is yet another word. Much must remain unsaid in these narrow limits; but they are wide enough, I hope, to have given the key by which you may find easy entrance to the mysteries we all may know, indeed must, if our lives are truly lived. If through intemperance, in meat or drink, in feeling or thought, you lessen bodily or mental power, you alone are accountable, whether ignorant or not. Only in a never-failing self-control can safety ever be. Temperance is the foundation of high living; and here is its definition, by one whose own life holds it day by day:—

"Temperance is personal cleanliness; is modesty; is quietness; is reverence for one's elders and betters; is deference to one's mother and sisters; is gentleness; is courage; is the withholding from all which leads to excess in daily living; is the eating and drinking only of that which will insure the best body which the best soul is to inhabit: nay, temperance is all these, and more."



PART II.



STOCK AND SEASONING.

The preparation called STOCK is for some inscrutable reason a stumbling-block to average cooks, and even by experienced housekeepers is often looked upon as troublesome and expensive. Where large amounts of fresh meat are used in its preparation, the latter adjective might be appropriate; but stock in reality is the only mode by which every scrap of bone or meat, whether cooked or uncooked, can be made to yield the last particle of nourishment contained in it. Properly prepared and strained into a stone jar, it will keep a week, and is as useful in the making of hashes and gravies as in soup itself.

The first essential is a tightly-covered kettle, either tinned iron or porcelain-lined, holding not less than two gallons; three being a preferable size. Whether cooked or uncooked meat is used, it should be cut into small bits, and all bones broken or sawn into short pieces, that the marrow may be easily extracted.

To every pound of meat and bone allow one quart of cold water, one even teaspoon of salt, and half a saltspoon of pepper. Let the meat stand till the water is slightly colored with its juice; then put upon the fire, and let it come slowly to a boil, skimming off every particle of scum as it rises. The least neglect of this point will give a broth in which bits of dark slime float about, unpleasant to sight and taste. A cup of cold water, thrown in as the kettle boils, will make the scum rise more freely. Let it boil steadily, but very slowly, allowing an hour to each pound of meat. The water will boil away, leaving, at the end of the time specified, not more than half or one-third the original amount. In winter this will become a firm jelly, which can be used by simply melting it, thus obtaining a strong, clear broth; or can be diluted with an equal quantity of water, and vegetables added for a vegetable soup.

The meat used in stock, if boiled the full length of time given, has parted with all its juices, and is therefore useless as food. If wanted for hashes or croquettes, the portion needed should be taken out as soon as tender, and a pint of the stock with it, to use as gravy. Strain, when done, into a stone pot or crock kept for the purpose, and, when cold, remove the cake of fat which will rise to the top. This fat, melted and strained, serves for many purposes better than lard. If the stock is to be kept several days, leave the fat on till ready to use it.

Fresh and cooked meat may be used together, and all remains of poultry or game, and trimmings of chops and steaks, may be added, mutton being the only meat which can not as well be used in combination; though even this, by trimming off all the fat, may also be added. If it is intended to keep the stock for some days, no vegetables should be added, as vegetable juices ferment very easily. For clear soups they must be cooked with the meat; and directions will be given under that head for amounts and seasonings.

The secret of a savory soup lies in many flavors, none of which are allowed to predominate; and, minutely as rules for such flavoring may be given, only careful and frequent tasting will insure success. Every vegetable, spice, and sweet herb, curry-powders, catchups, sauces, dried or fresh lemon-peel, can be used; and the simple stock, by the addition of these various ingredients, becomes the myriad number of soups to be found in the pages of great cooking manuals like Gouffee's or Francatelli's.

Brown soups are made by frying the meat or game used in them till thoroughly brown on all sides, and using dark spices or sauces in their seasoning.

White soups are made with light meats, and often with the addition of milk or cream.

Purees are merely thick soups strained carefully before serving, and made usually of some vegetable which thickens in boiling, as beans, pease, &c, though there are several forms of fish purees in which the foundation is thickened milk, to which the fish is added, and the whole then rubbed through a common sieve, if a regular puree-sieve is not to be had.

Browned flour is often used for coloring, but does not thicken a soup, as, in browning it, the starchy portion has been destroyed; and it will not therefore mix, but settles at the bottom. Burned sugar or caramel makes a better coloring, and also adds flavor. With clear soups grated cheese is often served, either Parmesan or any rich cheese being used. Onions give a better flavor if they are fried in a little butter or dripping before using, and many professional cooks fry all soup vegetables lightly. Cabbage and potatoes should be parboiled in a separate water before adding to a soup. In using wine or catchup, add only at the last moment, as boiling dissipates the flavor. Unless a thick vegetable soup is desired, always strain into the tureen. Rice, sago, macaroni, or any cereal may be used as thickening; the amounts required being found under the different headings. Careful skimming, long boiling, and as careful removing of fat, will secure a broth especially desirable as a food for children and the old, but almost equally so for any age; while many fragments, otherwise entirely useless, discover themselves as savory and nutritious parts of the day's supply of food.

* * * * *

SOUPS.

BEEP SOUP WITH VEGETABLES.

For this very excellent soup take two quarts of stock prepared beforehand, as already directed. If the stock is a jelly, as will usually be the case in winter, an amount sufficient to fill a quart-measure can be diluted with a pint of water, and will then be rich enough. Add to this one small carrot, a turnip, a small parsnip, and two onions, all chopped fine; a cupful of chopped cabbage; two tablespoonfuls of barley or rice; and either six fresh tomatoes sliced, or a small can of sealed ones. Boil gently at least one hour; then add one saltspoonful each of pepper, curry-powder, and clove. If the stock has been salted properly, no more will be needed; but tasting is essential to secure just the right flavors. Boil a few minutes longer, and serve without straining.