The Chemistry of Cookery

food. Raw potatoes contain potash salts which are easily soluble in water. I find that when the potato is boiled some of the potash comes out into the water, and thus the vegetable is robbed of a very valuable constituent. The baked potato contains all its original saline constituents which, as I have already stated, are specially demanded as an addition to cheese-food. Hasty pudding made, as usual, of wheat flour, may be converted from an insipid to a savoury and highly nutritious porridge by the addition of cheese in like manner. The same with boiled rice, whether whole or ground, also sago, tapioca, and other forms of edible starch. Supposing whole rice is used—and I think this is the best—the cheese may be sprinkled among the grains of rice and well stirred or mashed up with them. The addition of a little brown gravy to this, with or without chicken giblets, gives us an Italian _risotto_. The Indian-corn stirabout of the poor Irish cottier would be much improved both in flavour and nutritive value by the addition of a little grated cheese. Pease pudding is not improved by cheese. The chemistry of this will come out when I explain the composition of peas, beans, &c. The same applies to pea soup. I might enumerate other methods of cooking cheese by thus adding it in a finely-divided state to other kinds of food, but if I were to express my own convictions on the subject I should stir up prejudice by naming some mixtures which many people would denounce. As an example I may refer to a dish which I invented more than twenty years ago—viz. fish and cheese pudding, made by taking the remains from a dish of boiled codfish, haddock, or other _white_ fish, mashing it with bread-crumbs, grated cheese, and ketchup, then warming in an oven and serving after the usual manner of scalloped fish. Any remains of oyster sauce may be advantageously included. I find this delicious, but others may not. I frequently add grated cheese to boiled fish as ordinarily served, and have lately made