The Chemistry of Cookery

to the gravy? This is a very fair question, and not difficult to answer. If both are equally cooked, neither overdone nor underdone, they must contain, weight for weight, exactly the same constituents in equally digestible form, so far as chemical composition is concerned. Whether they will actually be digested with equal facility and assimilated with equal completeness depends upon something else not measurable by chemical analysis, viz. the relish with which they are respectively eaten. To some persons the undisguised fleshiness of the English slice, especially if underdone, is very repugnant. To these the corresponding morsel, cooked according to Gouffé rather than Mrs. Beeton, would be more nutritious. To the carnivorous John Bull, who regards such dishes as ‘nasty French messes’ of questionable composition, the slice of unmistakable ox-flesh, from a visible joint, would obtain all the advantages of appreciative mastication, and that sympathy between the brain and the stomach which is so powerful that, when discordantly exerted, it may produce the effects that are recorded in the case of the sporting traveller who was invited by a Red Indian chief to a ‘dog-fight,’ and ate with relish the savoury dishes at what he supposed to be a preliminary banquet. Digestion was tranquilly and healthfully proceeding, under the soothing influence of the calumet, when he asked the chief when the fight would commence. On being told that it was over, and that, in the final ragoût he had praised so highly, the last puppy-dog possessed by the tribe had been cooked in his honour, the normal course of digestion of the honoured guest was completely reversed. Before leaving the subject of caramel, I should say a few words about French coffee, or ‘Coffee as in France,’ of which we hear so much. There are two secrets upon which depend the excellence of our neighbours in the production of this beverage. First, economy in using the water; second, flavouring with caramel. As regards the first, it appears that English housewives have been demoralised by the habitual use of tea, and apply to the infusion of coffee the popular formula for