The Chemistry of Cookery

of milk, the milk is converted into unpressed cheese, or curd, prior to its digestion. Supposing that, on an average, cheese contains only one-half of the 6 per cent. of phosphate of lime found, as above, in the casein, and taking into consideration the water contained in flesh, the bone, &c., we may conclude generally that one pound of average cheese contains as much nutriment as three pounds of the average material of the carcass of an ox or sheep as prepared for sale by the butcher; or otherwise stated, a cheese of 20 lbs. weight contains as much food as a sheep weighing 60 lbs. as it hangs in the butcher’s shop. Now comes the practical question. Can we assimilate or convert into our own substance the cheese-food as easily as we may the flesh-food? I reply that we certainly cannot, if the cheese is eaten raw; but have no doubt that we may, if it be suitably cooked. Hence the paramount importance of this part of my subject. A Swiss or Scandinavian mountaineer can and does digest and assimilate raw cheese as a staple article of food, and proves its nutritive value by the result; but feebler bipeds of the plains and towns cannot do the like. I may here mention that I have recently made some experiments on the dissolving of cheese by adding sufficient alkali (carbonate of potash) to neutralise the acid it contains, in order to convert the casein into its original soluble form as it existed in the milk, and have partially succeeded both with water and milk as solvents; but before reporting these results in detail I will describe some of the practically-established methods of cooking cheese that are so curiously unknown or little known in this country. In the fatherland of my grandfather, Louis Gabriel Mattieu, one of the commonest dishes of the peasant who tills his own freehold and grows his own food is a _fondu_. This is a mixture of cheese and eggs, the cheese grated and beaten into the egg as in making omelettes, with a small addition of