The Chemistry of Cookery

longer, and then pressing out the liquid. I find that oatmeal-porridge when thus treated is thinned by the conversion of the bulk of its insoluble starch into soluble dextrin; that boiled rice is similarly thinned; that a stiff jelly of arrowroot is at once rendered watery, and its conversion into dextrin is demonstrated by its altered action when a solution of iodine is added to it. It no longer becomes suddenly of a deep blue colour as when it was starch. Sago and tapioca are similarly changed, but not so completely as arrowroot. This is evidently because they contain a little nitrogenous matter and cellulose, which, when stirred, give a milkiness to the otherwise clear and limpid solution of dextrin. Pease-pudding when thus treated behaves very instructively. Instead of remaining as a fairly uniform paste, it partially separates into paste and clear liquid, the paste being the cellulose and vegetable casein, the liquid a solution of the dextrin or converted starch. Mashed turnips, carrots, potatoes, &c., behave similarly, the general results showing that so far as starch is concerned there is no practical difficulty in obtaining a conversion of the starch into dextrin by means of a very small quantity of maltose. Hasty pudding made of boiled flour is similarly altered. Generally speaking, the degree of visible alteration is proportionate to the amount of starch, but the more intimately it is mixed with the cellulose, the more slowly the change occurs. I have made malt-porridge by using malt flour instead of oatmeal. I found it rather too sweet, but on mixing about one part of malt flour with four to eight parts of oatmeal, an excellent and easily digestible porridge is obtained, and one which I strongly recommend as a most valuable food for strong people and invalids, children and adults. Further details of these experiments would be tedious, and are not necessary, as they display no chemical changes that are new to science, and the practical results may be briefly stated without such details, as follows. I recommend, first, the production of malt flour by grinding and sifting malted