Middle class cookery book

Most labourers can obtain cheese, bacon, flour, barley, oatmeal, rice, peas, and beans. With these, and with potatoes and fresh vegetables, grown it may be in their own gardens, a few flavouring herbs (as thyme, mint, marjoram, sage, and parsley), which could easily be cultivated in a small garden, they may obtain a thoroughly nutritious and varied diet. Cheese especially, ranks near flesh meat in the amount of nour- ishment it contains. A dinner of bread and cheese, accompanied by half a lettuce (too little used by the poor), or an apple, water -cress, or a few dandelion leaves, gives all the kinds of food needed to support the body in health. But these materials even when more lightly prepared are unsuitable for children’s diet without the addition of milk, and it is much to be regretted that this im- portant element of diet is so difficult to be obtained in country districts. The custom of allowing each cottager grass for a cow seems to be rapidly dying out, and one consequence of it is that children are in- sufficiently nourished. Landed proprietors and tenant- farmers could hardly confer a greater benefit upon their cottagers than by providing a plentiful supply of milk for them to purchase. In places where there is insufficient pasturage for cows, goats might be kept. IV. Different States of Health Diets for those in health are embodied in the pre- ceding remarks. Tn sickness, much of the progress of the patient towards recovery depends on the giving of 1 See School Cookery Book. Macmillan and Co. 20 MIDDLE CLASS COOKERY BOOK PART 1 judiciously chosen and well-prepared food. The digest- ive powers being generally weakened, food is wanted in smaller quantities, and in a more easily digested form than in health. Detailed recipes may be found at p. 184, and in the School Cookery Book. The following general remarks indicate the kinds of food required for certain illnesses : — - In Fevers give liquid (not solid) food in small quantities and frequently ; cooling drinks (whey, lemon- ade, apple water, etc.) ; butter milk or sweet milk. When the fever lasts long it is sometimes necessary to give beef tea and strong soup to keep up strength. As the fever subsides, give milk puddings, gruel, bread and milk, bread jelly, calf’s foot or ox foot jelly, arrow- root, fruit jelly, beef tea, and soup. In convalescence give broiled or boiled (not fried) white fish, whiting is best ; later give eggs and animal food, beginning with tripe and mutton. In fever, more perhaps than in any other disease, diet should be regulated by the doctor, as relapses are often produced by irregularity of diet. Rheumatic Fever. — Give entirely vegetable diet, vegetable soups, milk puddings, gruel, arrowroot, jelly, porridge, mashed potatoes, bread and butter, lemon juice in water, but without sugar. If meat is given, either solid or in soups, it aggravates the pain. Dysentei'y and. Diarrhoea. — Give neither fruits nor green vegetables ; avoid meat, especially salted or dried Give milk (previously boiled), milk puddings, rice water, boiled rice, and occasionally a mealy potato boiled or roasted. Constipation. — Give brown bread, fresh and stewed fruits, green vegetables, including lettuces, water-cress, dandelion leaves. A tumbler of cold water an hour before breakfast is occasionally recommended. Indigestion and Stomach Complaints. — Tf a CHAP. Ill ADAPTATION OF FOOD 21