English and French cookery

The fibrin in fish is most stimulating and nourishing, and being easily converted into muscular tissue leaves scarcely any residuum in the digestive tubes. Gelatine, on the other hand, is about the least nutritious of the organic elements of food, and produces much fecal matter. The third constituent, albumen, is nitrogenous and nourishing. Bread and Farinaceous Foods. Amongst the various corn-plants used for food, wheat claims preeminence in all its varieties. ‘ Our daily bread ’ is composed of a larger proportion of the nitrogen ( 1 to meet the wear and tear of the body’) and carbon (furnishing heat and power), and a smaller proportion of water and ashes, than will be found in any other corn-plant. The proportion of the nitrogenous to the carbonaceous elements is as 1 to 4, which, according to Liebig, is for human food about the right proportion. But to secure its full value such food 1 ought to contain all the constituents of the wheat, instead of being made of flour from which most of the mineral elements have been taken. The removal of the darker and rougher portions which belong to the external part of the grain deprives wheaten flour of some of its most nutritious constituents. Fineness and whiteness is attained at a certain sacrifice of nourishing quality, and such flour, although equally good for those whose means enable them to obtain other nutriment abundantly, is not desirable for the labourer, in whose dietary bread forms so large a part.’ The materials which supply the nutritious and heat-giving elements to corn are fibrine, albumen, caseine, gluten, starch, sugar, gum, oil, or fatty matter, and saline substances, chiefly phosphates. The excellence of wheaten flour for making bread is due to the quantity of gluten contained, which is larger than in any other cereaL In cooking flour, success depends upon the proper amount of water being supplied, with sufficient heat to cause the cells in which the starch exists to escape. If the water is not sufficient, these cells will not absorb enough to cause them to burst. Wheaten Bread. — When yeast is used in making bread it converts the starch or sugar into alcohol, which is afterwards evaporated by heat. Stale yeast makes the bread heavy and unwholesome. When in its most digestible condition it is uniformly light and porous. The more compact, close, or heavy the bread, the less easily is it acted upon by the digestive fluids. When made with potatoes, as inferior bread not unfrequently is, it quickly turns sour. If bread be eaten too largely or without the right proportion of other foods, it is apt to create viscidity or slime. Brown or Whole-Meal Bread and abundance of milk should be given to growing children ; and they can be brought up well without a meat diet, since the outer coating of the wheat contains all the mineral phosphates requisite for the formation of teeth, bones, flesh, and muscle which a growing child requires.