Hasty pudding made of boiled flour is similarly altered. Generally speaking, the degree of visible alteration is proportionate to the amount of starch, but the more intimately it is mixed with the cellulose, the more slowly the change occurs.
I have made malt-porridge by using malt flour instead of oatmeal. I found it rather too sweet, but on mixing about one part of malt flour with four to eight parts of oatmeal, an excellent and easily digestible porridge is obtained, and one which I strongly recommend as a most valuable food for strong people and invalids, children and adults.
Further details of these experiments would be tedious, and are not necessary, as they display no chemical changes that are new to science, and the practical results may be briefly stated without such details, as follows.
I recommend, first, the production of malt flour by grinding and sifting malted wheat, malted barley, or malted oats, or all of these, and the retailing of this at its fair value as a staple article of food. Every shopkeeper who sells flour or meal of any kind should sell this.
Secondly, that this malted flour, or the extract made from it as above described, be mixed with the ordinary flour used in making pastry, biscuits, bread, &c.,[22] and with all kinds of porridge, pastry, pea-soup, and other farinaceous preparations, and that when these are
cooked they should be slowly heated at first, in order that the maltose may act upon the starch at its most favourable temperature (140° to 150° Fahr.).
Thirdly, when practicable, such preparations as porridge, pea-soup, pastry, &c., should be prepared by first cooking them in the usual manner, then stirring the malt meal or malt extract into them, and allowing the mixture to remain for some time. This time may vary from a few minutes to several hours or days—the longer the better. I have proved by experiments on boiled rice, oatmeal-porridge, pease-pudding, &c., that complete conversion may thus be effected. When the temperature of 140° to 150° is carefully obtained, the work of conversion is done in half an hour or less. At 212° it is arrested. At temperatures below 140°, it proceeds with a slowness varying with the depression of temperature. The most rapid result is obtained by first cooking the food as above, then reducing the temperature to 150°, and adding the malt flour or malt extract, and maintaining the temperature for a short time. The advantage of previous cooking is due to the preliminary breaking-up and hydration of the starch granules.
Fourthly, besides the malt meal or malt flour, I recommend the manufacture of what I may call ‘pearl malt,’ that is, malt treated as barley is treated in the manufacture of pearl barley. This pearl malt may be largely used in soups, puddings, and for other purposes evident to the practical cook. It may be found preferable to the malt flour for some of the above-named purposes, especially for making a purée like Rumford’s soup.
I strongly recommend such a soup to vegetarians—i.e. the Rumford soup No. 1, already described, but with the admixture of a little pearl malt with the pearl barley (or malt flour failing the pearl malt). A small proportion of malt (one-twentieth, for example) has a considerable effect, but a larger amount is desirable. In all cases this quantity may be regulated by experience and according to whether a decided malt flavour is or is not preferred.