“The cereals contain all the elements necessary to the nutrition of the body, having in themselves the types of food which are represented by the fats, the nitrogenous or protein bodies, and the carbohydrates. In addition to these, they contain those mineral elements of which the bony structure of the body is composed, viz., lime and phosphoric acid. If, therefore, man were confined to a single article of diet, there is nothing which would be so suitable for his use as the cereals. Starch and sugar are primarily the foods which furnish animal heat and energy, and hence should be used in great abundance by those who are engaged in manual labor. The workingmen of our country, especially, should consider this point, and accustom themselves more and more to the use of cereals in their foods. When properly prepared and properly served they are palatable, as well as nutritious, and their judicious use in this way would tend to diminish the craving for flesh, which, however, it is not advisable to exclude entirely from the diet. By persons whose habits of life are sedentary, requiring but little physical exertion, starch and sugar should be eaten more sparingly.”
Preparation of Foods.—No country equals our own in the abundance and quality of materials for the table, and probably no other compares with it in the ignorance and carelessness displayed in its cooking. A large part of the sickness, discomfort, and unhappiness of life finds its source just here. In many well-to-do families the whole matter is relegated to ignorant and incompetent servants whose only interest in the household is of a financial character, and that is entirely one-sided. The mistress is often more ignorant on this subject than the servant, and the “queen of the kitchen” reigns supreme.
Among the middle and lower classes, where the mistress is herself the cook, the results are no better. Being without proper early training, or growing up with the idea that it is not genteel to work, she comes to her task wholly unprepared, and an ill-fed, sickly family is the result. In many cities and towns, cooking schools are found, but the graduates do not compare with those who graduated from their mothers’ kitchens, in the days when domestic labor was respected. The mind of the ambitious cooking-school graduate is too often concerned with the pretty pastries and dainty desserts that please the eye and pamper the appetite, instead of mastering the art of properly preparing the bread, meat, and vegetables, and the other substantial things.
Bread.—So important a part does bread play in the physical economy that it is often called the staff of life. In cities and towns and in many country villages the baker supplies the general need. Yielding to the popular demand for white bread, he uses flour that has been robbed of its most nutritious properties, and introduces unwholesome substances to make it light and white. The best bread is that in which the starch cells are most completely burst. The making of wholesome, palatable, home-made bread is becoming a “lost art” even among farmers’ wives and daughters. The corner grocery and the baker’s wagon furnish the freshly-baked loaf, the housewife is spared some trouble, and the household loses what should be one of the most healthful, nutritious, and appetizing elements of the daily supply of food. In parts of the South and West, the large use of hot bread is the cause of much indigestion and ill health.
Meats.—Broadly speaking, there are two methods of treating meats. By the first, it is the aim to keep the juices within the meat, as in baking, broiling, and frying. By the second, the object is to extract the juices and dissolve the fiber, as in the making of soups and stews. In order to imprison the juices and thus develop the flavor, the meat must be subjected to intense heat for a short time, so as to coagulate the outer layers of albumen, and afterward a more moderate heat should be employed to complete the cooking. To extract the juices, meat should be cut into small pieces, put into cold water, and slowly raised to the boiling point.
Roasting is probably the best method of cooking meats, especially large, thick pieces. Frying is the worst method, as the heated fat penetrates the meat, dries and hardens it, and renders it indigestible. The American frying-pan is, beyond question, the most deadly instrument that can be named. The sword may claim its thousands, or even its tens of thousands, but the frying-pan numbers its victims by the millions. And yet the skilled French cook robs even this destructive implement of its terror, and furnishes the table not only with meats but with whatever else has been fried, free from soaking grease, finely flavored, and above all, thoroughly digestible. The fault must therefore be ascribed to the cook, and not to the frying-pan.
In an address on “Home Economies Among the Poor People of New York,” the Rev. Dr. William S. Rainsford declares that living expenses are entirely too high. “The poor families of New York are in a tight place. Food is not so cheap as it should be. Fish, for instance, should be sold in New York for half its present price.
“Because of these things it is growing more and more difficult for young persons to marry. You have no idea how dangerous this is.
“Another reason for suffering among the poor is that the girls don’t know how to cook. One of the best ways to hold even a fairly good man—not a blackguard, but an average man—is to know how to cook.
“This whole country is cursed by bad cooking. It is worse in the rural districts. It makes my heart sick to see the beautiful children, up to ten years, of the Tennessee and Carolina regions, with the shade of frying-pans spreading over their faces, killed by grease—vicious and expensive grease.”