The Chemistry of Cookery

by W. Mattieu Williams

I have not yet met with any malted maize commercially prepared, but my experiments on a small scale show that it is a very desirable product.

As regards the action of vegetable diastase on cellulose, whether it is capable of breaking it up or effecting its hydration and conversion into digestible sugar, I am not yet able to speak positively, but the following facts are promising.

I treated sago, tapioca, and rice with the maltose as above, and found that at a temperature of 140° to 150° all the starch disappears in about half an hour, as proved by the iodine test. Still the liquid was not clear: flocculi of cellulose, &c., were suspended in it. I kept this on the top of a stove several days, where the temperature of the liquid varied from 100° to 180° while the fire was burning, but fell to that of the atmosphere during the night. The quantity of the insoluble matter considerably diminished, but it was not entirely removed.

This led me to make further experiments, still in progress, on the ensilage of human food with the aid of diastase. These experiments are on a small scale, and are sufficiently satisfactory to justify more effective trials on a larger scale. It is well known that ordinary ensilage succeeds much better on a large than on a small scale, and I have no doubt that such will be the case with my diastase ensilage of oatmeal, pease-pudding, mashed roots, &c.

I am also treating such vegetable food material with various acids for the same purpose.

When by these or other means we convert vegetable tissue into dextrin and sugar, as it is naturally converted in the ripening pear, and as it has been artificially converted in our laboratories, we shall extend our food supplies in an incalculable degree. Swedes, turnips, mangold-wurzels, &c., will become delicate diet for invalids; horse beans, far more nutritious than beef; delicate biscuits and fancy pastry, as well as ordinary bread, will be produced from sawdust and wood shavings, plus a little leguminous flour to supplement the nitrogenous requirement.

This may even be done now. Long ago I converted an old pocket-handkerchief and part of an old shirt into sugar, but not profitably as a commercial transaction. Other chemists have done the like in their laboratories. It is yet to be done in the kitchen.

I should add that the sugar referred to in all the above is not cane sugar, but the sugar corresponding to that in the grape and in honey. It is less sweet than cane or beet sugar, but is a better food.

I have already spoken of the difficulty presented by the opposite nature of the solvents demanded by the casein and the cellulose in my experiments on the ensilage of pease-pudding. The action of diastase indicates a possible solution of this difficulty. Let us suppose that a sufficient amount of potash is used to dissolve the casein, its solution separated as described (pages 218-219), the insoluble fibrous remainder treated with maltose or malt flour, and its action allowed to proceed to fermentation and effecting the formation of acetic acid. Will this acid, by means of ensilage, act upon the cellulose as the acid of the unripe pear acts upon its cellulose?