The Chemistry of Cookery

or its elements. Dextrin has exactly the same composition; so also has gum-arabic when purified. But their properties differ considerably. Starch, as everybody knows, when dried is white and opaque and pulverent; dextrin, similarly dried, is transparent and brittle; gum-arabic the same. If a piece of starch, or a solution of starch, is touched by a solution of iodine, it becomes blue almost to blackness, if the solution is strong; no such change occurs when the iodine solution is added to dextrin or gum. A solution of dextrin when mixed with potash changes to a rich blue colour when a little sulphate of copper is added; no such effect is produced by gum-arabic, and thus we have an easy test for distinguishing between true and fictitious gum-arabic. The technical name for describing this persistence of composition with changes of properties is _isomerism_, and bodies thus related are said to be _isomeric_ with each other. Another distinguishing characteristic of dextrin is that it produces a right-handed rotation on a ray of polarised light, hence its name, from _dexter_, the right. The conversion of starch into dextrin is a very important element of the subject of vegetable cooking, inasmuch as starch food cannot be assimilated until this conversion has taken place, either before or after we eat it. I will therefore describe other methods by which this change may be effected. If starch be boiled in a dilute solution of almost any acid, it is converted into dextrin. A solution containing less than one per cent. of sulphuric or nitric acid is sufficiently strong for this purpose. One method of commercial manufacture (Payen’s) is to moisten 10 parts of starch with 3 of water, containing 1/150th of its weight of nitric acid, spreading the paste upon shelves, allowing it to dry in the air, and then heating it for an hour-and-a-half at about 240° Fahr. But the most remarkable and interesting agent in effecting this conversion is _diastase_. It is one of those mysterious compounds which have received the general name of ‘ferments.’ They are disturbers of chemical peace, molecular agitators that