The Chemistry of Cookery

repeat it, or who has separated the gluten of flour by similar treatment. Practically regarded in relation to our present subject, casein and legumin may be considered as the same. Their nutritive values are equal, and exceptionally high, supposing they can be digested and assimilated. One is the most difficult of digestion of the nitrogenous constituents of vegetable food, and the other enjoys the same distinction among those of animal food. Both primarily exist in a soluble form; both are rendered solid and insoluble in water by the action of acids; _both are precipitated as a curd by rennet_, and both are rendered soluble after precipitation, or are retained in their original soluble form by the action of alkalies. They nearly resemble _in flavour_, and John Chinaman makes actual cheese from peas and beans. Pease-pudding hot, pease-pudding cold, Pease-pudding in the pot, nine days old. I leave to Mr. Clodd the historical problem of determining whether this notable couplet is of Semitic, Aryan, Neolithic, or Paleolithic origin. Regarded from my point of view, it expresses a culinary and chemical principle of some importance, and indicates an ancient practice that is worthy of revival. I have lately made some experiments on the ensilage of human food, whereby the cellular tissue of the vegetable may be gradually subjected to that breaking up of fibre already described. One of the curious achievements of chemical metamorphoses that is often quoted as a matter for wonderment is the conversion of old rags into sugar by treating them with acid. The wonderment of this is diminished, and its interest increased, when we remember that the cellulose or woody fibre of which the rags are composed has the same composition as starch, and thus its conversion into sugar corresponds to the every-day proceedings described in Chapter XI. All that I have read and seen in connection with the recent ensilage experiments on cattle fodder indicate that it is a process of slow vegetable cookery, a digesting or maceration of fibrous vegetables in their own juices, which loosens the fibre, renders it softer and more digestible, and not