The chemistry of cookery / by W. Mattieu Williams.

  • Williams, W. Mattieu (William Mattieu), 1820-1892.
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The chemistry of cookery / by W. Mattieu Williams. 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.

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    whatever of what they denounce so violently, in spite of the fact that it is a staple article of food among millions of highly-intelligent people. Common sense (to say nothing of that highest result of true scientific training, the faculty of suspending judgment until the arrival of knowledge) should suggest that some degree of investi- gation should precede the denunciation. In the cases of the sour-kraut and the ripening pear there is acid at work upon the fibre, which, as I have before stated, assists in the conversion of this indigestible con- stituent into soluble and digestible dextrin and sugar. The demand for the solution of the vegetable casein or legumin, which has such high nutritive value and is so abundant in peas, &c., is of the opposite kind. Acids solidify and harden casein, alkalies soften and dissolve it. Therefore the chemical agent suggested as a suit- able aid in the ensilage or slow cookery, or the boiling or rapid cookery, of leguminous food is such an alkali as may be wholesome and compatible with the demands for nutrition. Ihe analyses of peas, beans, lentils, &c., show a de- ficiency of potash salts as compared with the quantity of nitrogenous nutriment they contain ; therefore I pro- pose, as in the case of cheese food, that we should add this potash in the convenient and safe form of bicar- bonate—not merely add it to the water in which the vegetables may be boiled, and which water is thrown away (as in the common practice of adding soda when boiling greens), but add the potash to the actual pease- porridge, pease-pudding, lentil soup, &c., and treat it as a part of the food as well as an adjunct to the cookery. This is especially required when we use dried peas, dried beans of any kind, such as haricots, dried lentils, &c. I find that taking the ordinary yellow split-peas and