The Chemistry of Cookery

into dextrin and sugar, as it is naturally converted in the ripening pear, and as it has been artificially converted in our laboratories, we shall extend our food supplies in an incalculable degree. Swedes, turnips, mangold-wurzels, &c., will become delicate diet for invalids; horse beans, far more nutritious than beef; delicate biscuits and fancy pastry, as well as ordinary bread, will be produced from sawdust and wood shavings, plus a little leguminous flour to supplement the nitrogenous requirement. This may even be done now. Long ago I converted an old pocket-handkerchief and part of an old shirt into sugar, but not profitably as a commercial transaction. Other chemists have done the like in their laboratories. It is yet to be done in the kitchen. I should add that the sugar referred to in all the above is not cane sugar, but the sugar corresponding to that in the grape and in honey. It is less sweet than cane or beet sugar, but is a better food. I have already spoken of the difficulty presented by the opposite nature of the solvents demanded by the casein and the cellulose in my experiments on the ensilage of pease-pudding. The action of diastase indicates a possible solution of this difficulty. Let us suppose that a sufficient amount of potash is used to dissolve the casein, its solution separated as described (pages 218-219), the insoluble fibrous remainder treated with maltose or malt flour, and its action allowed to proceed to fermentation and effecting the formation of acetic acid. Will this acid, by means of ensilage, act upon the cellulose as the acid of the unripe pear acts upon its cellulose? This is another of the questions that I can only suggest, not having had time and opportunity to supply experimental answer. Do fruits contain diastase? Two kinds of food are described by Pavy (‘Treatise on Food and Dietetics,’ page 227), in the preparation of which the conversion of starch into dextrin appears to be effected. As I have no acquaintance with these, never met with them either in Scotland or Wales, I will quote