The Chemistry of Cookery

as the basis of his soup just that proximate element which we now know to be one of the most nutritious that he could have obtained from either the animal or vegetable kingdom—viz. _casein_. He not only selected this, but he combined it with those other constituents of food which our highest refinements of modern practical chemistry and physiology have proved to be exactly what are required to supplement the casein and constitute a complete dietary. By selecting the cheapest form of casein and the cheapest sources of the other constituents, he succeeded in supplying the beggars with good hot dinners daily at the cost of less than one halfpenny each. The cost of the mess for the Bavarian soldiers under his command was rather more, viz. twopence daily, three farthings of this being devoted to pure luxuries, such as beer, &c. Some of his chemical speculations, however, have not been confirmed. The composition of water had just been discovered, and he found by experience that a given quantity of solid food was more satisfying to the appetite and more effective in nutrition when made into soup by long boiling with water. This led him to suppose that the water itself was decomposed by cookery, and its elements recombined or united with other elements, and thus became nutritious by being converted into the tissues of plants and animals. Thus, speaking of the barley which formed an important constituent of his soup, he says: ‘It requires, it is true, a great deal of boiling; but when it is properly managed, it thickens a vast quantity of water, and, as I suppose, _prepares it for decomposition_’ (the italics are his own). We now know that this idea of decomposing water by such means is a mistake; but, in my own opinion, there is something behind it which still remains to be learned by modern chemists. In my endeavours to fathom the _rationale_ of the changes which occur in cookery, I have been (as my readers will remember) continually driven into hypotheses of hydration, _i.e._ of supposing that some of the water used