The Chemistry of Cookery

his description: ‘_Sowans_, _seeds_, or _flummery_, which constitutes a very popular article of diet in Scotland and South Wales, is made from the husks of the grain (oats). The husks, with the starchy particles adhering to them, are separated from the other parts of the grain and steeped in water for one or two days, until the mass ferments and becomes sourish. It is then skimmed and the liquid boiled down to the consistence of gruel. In Wales this food is called _sucan_. _Budrum_ is prepared in the same manner, except that the liquid is boiled down to a sufficient consistency to form, when cold, a firm jelly. This resembles blancmange, and constitutes a light, demulcent, and nutritious article of food, which is well suited for the weak stomach.’ Here it is evident that solution takes place and a gummy substance is formed; this and the fermentation and sourish taste all indicate the action of the diastase of the seed converting the starch into dextrin and sugar, the latter passing at once into acetic fermentation. Having only just met with this passage, I am unable to supply any experimental evidence, but suggest to any of my readers who may be on the spot where either of these preparations are made, the simple experiment of adding a little diluted tincture of iodine to the sowans or budrum, preferably to the latter. If any of the starch remains as starch, a deep blue tint will be immediately struck; if this is not the case it is _all_ converted. I have just received a letter (while the proofs of this sheet are in course of correction) from a retired barrister in his seventy-third year, who, after a successful career in India, ‘retired in 1870 to enjoy the _otium cum dig_.’ Among other interesting particulars relating to animal and vegetable diet, he tells me that ‘somehow I did not, with a purely vegetable diet, excite saliva sufficient for digestion, and being constitutionally a gouty subject, I have suffered very much from gout until comparatively lately (say the last eight months), when an idea came