Middle class cookery book

Sugar also is an important agent in producing and keeping up warmth. These three substances fats, starch, and sugar — may therefore be named I. Warmth or Heat-givers Table showing the Chief Wakmth-giving 1 Foods Fats Starch Sugar Found in Found in Found in Cream Flour Sugar-cane Butter Potatoes Beetroot Oil Arrowroot Treacle Yolk of Egg Corn Flour Honey Suet Rice Fruit Dripping Lard Semolina Tapioca And most Garden Vegetables Milk The food after digestion is passed into the blood, which is then pumped by the heart into the lungs. The blood is spread out in little thin hairlike vessels all over the lungs, so that the air breathed into the lungs may mix with it. The mixture of that portion of the air called oxygen, with the fatty particles floating in this blood, causes in living creatures a burning up of these fatty particles, and this combustion produces heat, and is so much like the process of burning which goes on in a fire, that it is sometimes called animal-burning or combustion.2 This mixture of fresh air with the 1 Technically called Carbonaceous Foods, because they contain a great deal of carbon. Coal, peat, and wood are the carbon burnt in a common fire. The air supplies the oxygen, which may be pumped in with bellows to make the fire burn briskly. 2 The technical name of this process is Oxidation. 6 MIDDLE CLASS COOKERY BOOK PART 1 other particles of food floating in the blood, also causes one of the many changes which they pass through before they are in a fit state to become part of the body. We must now see what kinds of food, or rather what parts of food, will make flesh, and so build up the body. The white of egg 1 is the type of food which is required for this purpose. Lean meat 2 and skim milk 3 are of the same nature. The sticky or glutinous sub- stance4 which was left in the cloth, after the starch was squeezed out of the flour, is a flesh-former ; also parts of almost all grains, such as oats ; and the glutin- ous matter5 of peas and beans. All these substances will make flesh — that is, will replace the used-up materials of the body — and we shall therefore call them II. Flesh-formers Table showing the Chief Flesh-forming Foods 6 Animal Lean Meat Fish Poultry Skim Milk Cheese White of Egg Vegetable Flesh-forming Material exists largely in — Peas Flour made Beans Macaroni - from Lentils Semolina J wheat Oatmeal Rye Barley Maize It will be seen from this table that both the animal and vegetable kingdoms supply flesh -formers. Half a pound of animal food has a larger amount of flesh- forming power than half a pound of vegetable food ; 1 Albumen. 2 The juice and fibre of lean meat consist almost entirely of albumen and fibrin. 3 When milk is turned into cheese, this substance is called casein. i Glutin. 6 Legumiu. n Technically called Nitrogenous Foods, as nitrogen is the flesh- forming element common to them all. They are also called albuminoid — i.e. white of egg like. CDAP. I THE MATERIALS OF FOOD ?