The Chemistry of Cookery

is provided for 1,200 persons 1 15 2⅔ This amounts to 422/1200, or a trifle more than ⅓ of a penny for each dinner of this No. 1 soup. The cost was still further reduced by the use of the potato, then a novelty, concerning which Rumford makes the following remarks, now very curious. ‘So strong was the aversion of the public, particularly the poor, against them at the time when we began to make use of them in the public kitchen of the House of Industry in Munich, that we were absolutely obliged, at first, to introduce them by stealth. A private room in a retired corner was fitted up as a kitchen for cooking them; and it was necessary to disguise them, by boiling them down entirely, and destroying their form and texture, to prevent their being detected.’ The following are the ingredients of ‘Soup No. 2,’ with potatoes: Weight Avoirdupois. Cost. lbs. oz. £ s. d. 2 _viertels_ of pearl barley 70 9 0 5 9-13/22 2 _viertels_ of peas 65 10 0 3 7⅝ 8 _viertels_ of potatoes 230 4 0 1 9-9/11 Cuttings of bread 69 10 0 10 2-4/11 Salt 19 13 0 1 2½ Vinegar 46 13 0 1 5½ Water 982 15 -- Fuel, servants, repairs, &c., as before 0 3 5-5/12 ----------- Total daily cost of 1,200 dinners 1 7 6⅔ This reduces the cost to a little above one farthing per dinner. In the essay from which the above is quoted, there is another account, reducing all the items to what they would cost in London in November 1795, which raises the amount to 2¾ farthings per portion for No. 1, and 2½ farthings for No. 2. In this estimate the expenses for fuel, servants, kitchen furniture, &c. are stated at three times as much as the cost at Munich, and the other items at the prices stated in the printed report of the Board of Agriculture of November 10, 1795. But since 1795 we have made great progress in the right direction. Bread then cost one shilling per loaf,