The Chemistry of Cookery

that when I recommended the use of bicarbonate of potash for the solution of casein, all these principles were kept in view, including the objection to the bicarbonate itself. In the case of the cheese, the quantity recommended was based on an estimate of the quantity of lactic acid existing in the cheese and capable of leaving the casein to go over to the potash. In the case of the peas the quantity is difficult to estimate, owing to its variability. The more correct determination of such quantities is among the objects of further research to which I have before alluded. Speaking generally it is not to the laboratory of the chemist that we should go for our potash salts, but to the laboratory of nature, and more especially to that of the vegetable kingdom. They exist in the green parts of all vegetables. This is illustrated by the manufacture of commercial potash from the ashes of the twigs and leaves of timber trees. The more succulent the vegetable the greater the quantity of potash it contains, though there are some minor exceptions to this. As I have already stated, we extract and waste a considerable proportion of these salts when we boil vegetables and throw away the _potage_, which our wiser and more thrifty neighbours add to their every-day _menu_. When we eat raw vegetables, as in salads, we obtain all their potash. Fruits generally contain important quantities of potash salts, and it is upon these especially that the possible victims of lithic acid should rely. Lemons and grapes contain them most abundantly. Those who cannot afford to buy these as articles of daily food may use cream of tartar, which, when genuine, is the natural salt of the grape, thrown down in the manner I shall describe when on the subject of the cookery of wines. At the risk of being accused of presumption, I must here protest, as a chemist, against one of ‘the fallacies of the faculty,’ or of certain members of the faculty, viz. that of indiscriminately prohibiting to gouty and rheumatic patients the use