The Chemistry of Cookery

IN an unguarded moment I promised to include the above in this work, and will do the best I can to fulfil the rash promise; but the utmost result of this effort can only be a co...

I NOW come to a very important constituent of animal food, although it is not contained in beef, mutton, pork, poultry, game, fish, or any other organised animal substance, unle...

THE process of frying follows next in natural order to those of roasting and grilling. A little reflection will show that in frying the heat is not communicated to the food by r...

MY readers will remember that I referred to Haller’s statement, ‘Dimidium corporis humani gluten est,’ which applies to animals generally, viz. that half of their substance is g...

TAKE eight parts by weight of meal (Rumford says ‘wheat or rye meal,’ and I add, or oatmeal), and one part of butter. Melt the butter in a clean _iron_ frying-pan, and, when thu...

I MUST not leave the subject of vegetable cookery without describing Count Rumford’s achievements in feeding the paupers, rogues, and vagabonds of Munich. An account of this is...

HAVING treated the cookery of the chief constituents of the roots and stems of the plant, the fibre and the starch, I now come to food obtained from the seeds and the leaves.

I HAVE repeatedly spoken of the nitrogenous and non-nitrogenous constituents of food, assuming that the nitrogenous are the more nutritious, are the plastic or flesh-building ma...

I MAY now venture to state my own view of a somewhat obscure subject—viz. the difference between the roasting or grilling of meat and the stewing of meat. It appears to me that,...

SOME of my readers may think that I ought to have treated this in connection with the boiling of meat, as boiling and stewing are commonly regarded as mere modifications of the...

My object in thus expressing this difference will be understood upon a little reflection. The volatile oils, when heated, being distilled without change are uncookable; while th...

AS most of my readers doubtless know, peas, beans, lentils and other seeds of leguminous plants are more nutritious, theoretically, than the seeds of grasses, such as wheat, bar...

GELATIN is a very important element of animal food; it is, in fact, the main constituent of the animal tissues, the walls of the cells of which animals are built up being compos...

IN order to illustrate some of the changes which take place in the cooking of animal food, I will first take the simple case of cooking an egg by means of hot water. These chang...

and roasting generally, and occupies ninety-four pages, including the special preface. This preface is curious now, as it contains the following apology for delay of publication...

A FEW years ago the ‘farmers’ friends’ were very sanguine on the subject of using malt as cattle food. At agricultural meetings throughout the country the iniquitous malt-tax wa...

Water is boiled in the kitchen for two distinct purposes: 1st, for the cooking of itself; 2nd, for the cooking of other things. A dissertation on the difference between raw wate...

IN my introductory chapter I said, ‘The fact that we use the digestive and nutrient apparatus of sheep, oxen, &c., for the preparation of our food is merely a transitory barbari...

THE philosopher who first perceived and announced the fact that all the physical doings of man consist simply in changing the places of things, made a very profound generalisati...

IN the third volume of his ‘Essays, Political, Economical, and Philosophical,’ page 129, Count Rumford introduces this subject, with the following apology, which I repeat and ad...

WE all know that there is a considerable difference between raw fat and cooked fat; but what is the _rationale_ of this difference? Is it anything beyond the obvious fusion or s...