The Chemistry of Cookery

Many argue and actually believe that because a given drug has great efficiency in curing disease, it must do good if taken under ordinary conditions of health. No high authorities are demanded for the refutation of this. A little common sense properly used is quite sufficient. It is evident that a medicine, properly so-called, is something which is capable of producing a disturbing or alterative effect on the body generally or some particular organ. The skill of the physician consists in so applying this disturbing agency as to produce an alteration of the state of disease, a direct conversion of the state of disease to a state of health, if possible (which is rarely the case), or more usually the conversion of one state of disease into another of milder character. But, when we are in a state of sound health, any disturbance or alteration must be a change for the worse, must throw us out of health to an extent proportionate to the potency of the drug. I might illustrate this by a multitude of familiar examples, but they would carry me too far away from my proper subject. There is, however, one class of such remedies which are directly connected with the chemistry of cookery. I refer to the condiments that act as ‘tonics,’ excluding common salt, which is an article of food, though often miscalled a condiment. Salt is food simply because it supplies the blood with one of its normal and necessary constituents, chloride of sodium, without which we cannot live. A certain quantity of it exists in most of our ordinary food, but not always sufficient. Cayenne pepper may be selected as a typical example of a condiment properly so-called. Mustard is a food and condiment combined; this is the case with some others. Curry powders are mixtures of very potent condiments with more or less of farinaceous materials, and sulphur compounds, which, like the oil of mustard, of onions, garlic, &c., may have a certain amount of special nutritive value. The mere condiment is a stimulating drug that does its work directly upon the