The Chemistry of Cookery

men who have lived rationally in India, and they all agree that the climate is especially favourable to longevity, provided bitter beer, and all other alcoholic drinks, all peppery condiments, and flesh foods are avoided. The most remarkable example of vigorous old age I have ever met was a retired colonel eighty-two years of age, who had risen from the ranks, and had been fifty-five years in India without furlough; drunk no alcohol during that period; was a vegetarian in India, though not so in his native land. I guessed his age to be somewhere about sixty. He was a Scotchman, and an ardent student of the works of both George and Dr. Andrew Combe. A correspondent inquires whether I class cocoa amongst the stimulants. So far as I am able to learn, it should not be so classed, but I cannot speak absolutely. Mere chemistry supplies no answer to this question. It is purely a physiological subject, to be studied by observation of effects. Such observations may be made by anybody whose system has not become ‘tolerant’ of the substance in question. My own experience of cocoa in all its forms is that it is not stimulating in any sensible degree. I have acquired no habit of using it, and yet I can enjoy a rich cup or bowl of cocoa or chocolate just before bed-time without losing any sleep. When I am occasionally betrayed into taking a late cup of coffee or tea, I repent it for some hours after going to bed. My inquiries among other people, who are not under the influence of that most powerful of all arguments, the logic of inclination, have confirmed my own experience. I should, however, add that some authorities have attributed exhilarating properties to the _theobromine_ or nitrogenous alkaloid of cocoa. Its composition nearly resembles that of theine, as the following (from Johnston) shows: Theine Theobromine Carbon 49·80 46·43 Hydrogen 5·08 4·20 Nitrogen 28·83 35·85 Oxygen 16·29 13·52 ------ ------ 100·00 100·00 It exists in the cocoa bean in about the same proportion as the theine in tea, but in