Wholesome fare : a sanitary cook-book, containing the laws of food and the practice of cookery, and embodying the best British and continental receipts ; with hints and useful suggestions for the sedentary, the sick, and the convalescent / by Dr. & Mrs. Delamere.

  • Delamere, Edmund S.
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Wholesome fare : a sanitary cook-book, containing the laws of food and the practice of cookery, and embodying the best British and continental receipts ; with hints and useful suggestions for the sedentary, the sick, and the convalescent / by Dr. & Mrs. Delamere. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

    28/814 (page 14)
    carbon. One hundred grains of starch contain, in round numbers, forty-five grains of carbon, six of hydrogen, and forty-nine of oxygen. Starch may almost be styled the parent of a large proportion of our alimentary com- bustibles ; for if, by an operation which Nature performs perfectly, without assistance, in certain cases, it loses a part of its carbon (leaving not more than thirty-six grains of carbon in every hundred grains of starch), it becomes—guess what—neither more nor less than sugar. And now leave Nature to carry out her work on this same sugar, under certain conditions, and another transformation will follow. About a third of its carbon will spontaneously combine with two-thirds of its oxygen, forming thereby carbonic acid, which will fly away as a gas—as the bubbles which foam in your glass of cider. The rest is—what? Alcohol,—the other combustible- we lately mentioned,—which burns even better than sugar and starch—seeing that a hundred grains of alcohol consist of fifty-three grains of carbon, thirteen of hydrogen, and thirty-four of oxygen. When all the starch is extracted from flour, there remains a whitish, elastic, gluey substance (glue can be made of it; it is what renders common paste so adhesive), called gluten. Gluten dried becomes brittle and semi-transparent. One hundred grams of gluten contain sixty-three grains of carbon, seven of hydrogen, thirteen of oxygen, and seventeen of azote. Please note the respective number of grains, and also the novel element (azote) introduced. Here you are requested to give a moment’s attention