The Chemistry of Cookery

slice or two of bacon; the dish to be filled or garnished with some previously-boiled haricots,’ is wisely recommended as a savoury meal for a poor man, and one that is highly nutritious. A chemical analysis of six-pennyworth of such a combination would prove its nutritive value to be equal to fully eighteen-pennyworth of beefsteak. Some people may be inclined to smile at what I am about to say, viz. that such savoury dishes, serving to vary the monotony of the poor hard-working man’s ordinary fare, afford considerable moral, as well as physical, advantage. An instructive experience of my own will illustrate this. When wandering alone through Norway in 1856, I lost the track in crossing the Kjolen fjeld, struggled on for twenty-three hours without food or rest, and arrived in sorry plight at Lom, a very wild region. After a few hours’ rest I pushed on to a still wilder region and still rougher quarters, and continued thus to the great Jostedal table-land, an unbroken glacier of 500 square miles; then descended the Jostedal itself to its opening on the Sogne fjord—five days of extreme hardship with no other food than flatbrod (very coarse oatcake), and bilberries gathered on the way, varied on one occasion with the luxury of two raw turnips. Then I reached a comparatively luxurious station (Ronnei), where ham and eggs and claret were obtainable. The first glass of claret produced an effect that alarmed me—a craving for more and for stronger drink, that was almost irresistible. I finished a bottle of St. Julien, and nothing but a violent effort of will prevented me from then ordering brandy. I attribute this to the exhaustion consequent upon the excessive work and insufficient unsavoury food of the previous five days; have made many subsequent observations on the victims of alcohol, and have no doubt that overwork and scanty, tasteless food is the primary source of the craving for strong drink that so largely prevails with such deplorable results among the class that is the most exposed to such privation. I do not say that this is the only