What to eat and when

by Susanna Cocroft

While these substances were discovered while working with rice, they have since come to include other substances which affect the nutritive value of food. The term “vitamin” has since been given to other apparently necessary elements in foods which seem to determine their nutritive value to the system. These necessary elements, “vitamins,” may be the spices and flavors used in the food, and sometimes, perhaps, may be the flavors resulting from the action of benign bacteria, as those which give the delicious flavor to butter and cheese.

Food, however nutritious, is lessened in its value to the system unless it appeals to the senses by its mode of preparation, seasoning, serving, and freshness. Sternberg insists that the senses of smell and taste determine chemical changes in foods with greater sensitiveness than chemical tests.

Dishes unskillfully prepared are not relished. Some chemical change has occurred which the senses detect and these dishes are rendered less wholesome, lacking the necessary “vitamin.” Distaste, loss of appetite, and even nausea and vomiting may occur.

Sternberg calls attention anew to the fact that the science of cooking is a complicated one and is a matter of taste in the widest sense of the term, that vitamins may largely be produced in the preparation of the food.

Corn (maize) is a native of America and has been one of the most extensively used cereals.

The chief products of corn are hominy, corn meal, cracked corn, samp, glucose, corn-starch and laundry starch. Alcohol is also made from it.

Corn bread and corn-meal mush were important foods with the early settlers, partly because they are nutritious and partly because the corn meal was easily prepared at the mill and was cheap.

The germ of the corn is larger in proportion than the germs of other grains, and it contains much fat; therefore it is heating. For this reason, it is strange that corn bread is so largely used by inhabitants of the southern states. It is a more appropriate food for winter in cold climates.

Because of the fat in the germ, corn meal readily turns rancid, and, on this account, the germ is separated and omitted from many corn-meal preparations.

Hulled corn, sometimes called lye hominy, is one of the old-fashioned ways of using corn. In its preparation, the skin is loosened by steeping the corn in a weak solution of lye, which gives it a peculiar flavor, pleasing to many.