A guide to modern cookery / by Mary Harrison ; with a preface by Sir Thomas Dyke Acland.

  • Harrison, Mary.
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A guide to modern cookery / by Mary Harrison ; with a preface by Sir Thomas Dyke Acland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    25/506 (page 5)
    a certain quantity of liquid and some mineral matters. Foods, therefore, naturally divide into two classes—the flesh-formers and heat-givers, generally spoken of as nitrogenous and carbonaceous foods. To the flesh-formers belong: albumen, chiefly found in eggs, milk, and meat; fibrin, in meat, fish, and cereal grains; gluten, in flour; casein, in the curd of milk; legumen, in pulse; gelatine, chiefly found in meat, bones and gristle. The heat-givers are: sugar in whatever form; fat of all kinds, whether from meat, or as butter or oil; and starch, which is found in most vegetables. These facts are sufficient to show the necessity of a mixed diet; and on this subject Professor Church says of food, that “ it should neither be restricted to vegetable products on the one hand, nor to animal substances (including milk and eggs) on the other. By due admixture of these, and by varying occasionally the kind of vegetables or meat taken, or the modes of cooking adopted, the necessai'y constituents of a diet are furnished more cheaply, and at the same time do more efficiently, their proper work. Now if we were to confine ourselves to wheaten bread, we should be obliged to eat, in order to obtain our daily supply of albuminoids, or flesh-formers, nearly four pounds, an amount that would give us nearly twice as much of the starchy matters which should ac- company the albuminoids—or in other words, it would supply not more than the necessary daily allowance of nitrogen, but almost twice the necessary daily allowance of carbon. Now animal food is generally richer in albuminoid or nitrogenous constituents than vegetable food; so by mixing loan meat with our bread we may get a food in which the constituents correspond better with our requirements ; for two pounds of bread may be substi- tuted by twelve ounces of meat, and yet all the necessary carbon, as well as nitrogen, bo thereby supplied.” Meat is, however, as the Professor goes on to remark, generally expensive, therefore it is as well to know what cheaper foods may be taken in placoof it. Cheese is the usual substitute in England, especially amongst the working classes, and it is, according to Professor Church, twice as rich in nitrogenous matters as butcher’s meat. Oatmeal, haricot beans, peas, lentils, are all rich in albuminoids, and can well be substituted for meat; macaroni is a most nutritious food, and whon well