The Chemistry of Cookery

and that, comparing it on the basis of cost for cost, its superiority is still greater. He tells us that ‘the pleasure of eating depends very much indeed upon the _manner_ in which the food is applied to the organs of taste,’ and that he considers ‘it necessary to mention, and even to illustrate in the clearest manner, every circumstance which appears to have influence in producing these important effects.’ As an example of this, I may quote his instructions for eating hasty pudding: ‘The pudding is then eaten with a spoon, each spoonful of it being dipped into the sauce before it is carried to the mouth, care being had in taking it up to begin on the outside, or near the brim of the plate, and to approach the centre by regular advances, in order not to demolish too soon the excavation which forms the reservoir for the sauce.’ His solid Indian-corn pudding is, in like manner, ‘to be eaten with a knife and fork, beginning at the circumference of the slice, and approaching regularly towards the centre, each piece of pudding being taken up with the fork and dipped into the butter, or dipped into it _in part only_, before it is carried to the mouth.’ As a supplement to the cheap soup recipes I will quote one which Rumford gives as the cheapest food which in his opinion can be provided in England: Take of water 8 gallons, mix it with 5 lbs. of barley-meal, boil it to the consistency of a thick jelly. Season with salt, vinegar, pepper, sweet herbs, and four red herrings pounded in a mortar. Instead of bread, add 5 lbs. of Indian corn made into a _samp_, and stir it together with a ladle. Serve immediately in portions of 20 oz. _Samp_ is ‘said to have been invented by the savages of North America, who have no corn-mills.’ It is Indian corn deprived of its external coat by soaking it ten or twelve hours in a lixivium of water and wood ashes.[17] This coat or husk, being separated from the kernel,