The Chemistry of Cookery

browning of bread is to make two bowls of bread and milk in the same manner, one with the crust the other with the crumb of the same loaf. I am not suggesting these as examples of better or worse flavour, but as evidence of the fact that much flavour of some sort is generated. It may be out of place, as I think it is, in the bread and milk, or it may be added with much advantage to other things, as it is by the cook who manipulates caramel and its analogues skilfully. The largest constituent of bread is starch. Excluding water, it constitutes about three-fourths of the weight of good wheaten flour. Starch differs but little from sugar in composition. It is easily converted into sugar by simply heating it with a little sulphuric acid, and by other means, of which I shall have to speak more fully hereafter, when I come to the cookery of vegetables. When simply heated, it is converted into dextrin or ‘British gum,’ largely used as a substitute for gum arabic. If the heat is continued a change of colour takes place; it grows darker and darker, until it blackens just as sugar does, the final result being nearly the same. Water is driven off in both cases, but in carbonising sugar we start with more water, sugar being starch plus water or the elements of water. Thus the brown material of bread-crust or toast is nearly identical with sugar caramel. I have often amused myself by watching what occurs when toast and water is prepared, and I recommend my readers to repeat the observation. Toast a small piece of bread to blackness, and then float it on water in a glass vessel. Leave the water at rest, and direct your attention to the under side of the floating toast. Little threadlike streams of brown liquid will be seen descending in the water. This is a solution of the substance which, if I mistake not, is a sort of caramel, and which ultimately tinges all the water. Some years ago I commenced