The Chemistry of Cookery

that anything rapidly boiling is hotter than when it simmers, and is therefore cooking more quickly, compels the non-scientific cook to shorten the tedious three-hour process by boiling. This boiling drives the water from below, bakes the lower stratum of the porridge, and spoils the whole. The ordinary cook, were she ‘at the strappado, or all the racks in the world,’ would not keep anything barely boiling for three hours with no visible result. According to her positive and superlative experience, the mess is cooked sufficiently in one-third of the time, as soon as the peas are softened. She don’t, and she won’t, and she can’t, and she shan’t understand anything about hydration. ‘When it’s done, it’s done, and there’s an end to it, and what more do you want?’ Hence the failures of the attempts to introduce Rumford’s porridge in our English workhouses, prisons, and soup kitchens. I find, when I make it myself, that it is incomparably superior and far cheaper than the ‘skilly’ at present provided, though the sample of skilly that I tasted was superior to the ordinary slop. The weight of each portion, as served to the beggars, &c., was 19·9 oz. (1 Bavarian pound); the solid matter contained was 6 oz. of No. 2, or 4¾ oz. of No. 1, and Rumford states that this ‘is quite sufficient to make a good meal for a strong, healthy person,’ as ‘abundantly proved by long experience.’ He insists, again and again, upon the necessity of the three-hours’ cooking, and I am equally convinced of its necessity, though, as above explained, not on the same theoretical grounds. No repetition of his experience is fair unless this be attended to. I have no hesitation in affirming that the 4¾ oz. of No. 1, when thus boiled for 3 hours, will supply more nutriment than 6 oz. boiled only 1½ hour. The bread should _not_ be cooked, but added just before serving the soup. In reference to this he has published a very curious essay, entitled ‘Of the Pleasure of Eating, and of the Means that may be Employed