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THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY




_OPINIONS OF THE PRESS_

ON

THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY.


‘The reader who wants to satisfy himself as to the value of this book,
and the novelty which its teaching possesses, need not go beyond the
first chapter, on “The Boiling of Water.” But if he reads this he
certainly will go further, and will probably begin to think how he can
induce his cook to assimilate some of the valuable lessons which Mr.
Williams gives. If he can succeed in that he will have done a very good
day’s work for his health and house.... About the economical value
of the book there can be no doubt.’—SPECTATOR.

‘Will be welcomed by all who wish to see the subject of the preparation
of food reduced to a science.... Perspicuously and pleasantly Mr.
Williams explains the why and the wherefore of each successive step
in any given piece of culinary work. Every mistress of a household
who wishes to raise her cook above the level of a mere automaton
will purchase two copies of Mr. Williams’s excellent book—the one
for the kitchen, and the other for her own careful and studious
perusal.’—KNOWLEDGE.

‘Thoroughly readable, full of interest, with enough of the author’s
personality to give a piquancy to the stories told.’—WESTMINSTER REVIEW.

‘Mr. Williams is a good chemist and a pleasant writer: he has evidently
been a keen observer of dietaries in various countries, and his little
book contains much that is worth reading.’—ATHENÆUM.

‘There is plenty of room for this excellent book by Mr. Mattieu
Williams.... There are few conductors of cookery classes who are so
thoroughly grounded in the science of the subject that they will not
find many valuable hints in Mr. Williams’s pages.’—SCOTSMAN.

‘Throughout the work we find the signs of care and thoughtful
investigation.... Mr. Williams has managed most judiciously to
compress into a very small compass a vast amount of authoritative
information on the subject of food and feeding generally—and the volume
is really quite a compendium of its subject.’—FOOD.

‘The British cook might derive a good many useful hints from Mr.
Williams’s latest book.... The author of “The Chemistry of Cookery”
has produced a very interesting work. We heartily recommend it to
theorists, to people who cook for themselves, and to all who are
anxious to spread abroad enlightened ideas upon a most important
subject.... Hereafter, cookery will be regarded, even in this
island, as a high art and science. We may not live to those delightful
days; but when they come, and the degree of Master of Cookery is
granted to qualified candidates, the “Chemistry of Cookery” will be
a text-book in the schools, and the bust of Mr. Mattieu Williams
will stand side by side with that of Count Rumford upon every
properly-appointed kitchen dresser.’—PALL MALL GAZETTE.

‘Housekeepers who wish to be fully informed as to the nature of
successful culinary operations should read “The Chemistry of
Cookery.”’—CHRISTIAN WORLD.

‘In all the nineteen chapters into which the work is divided there
is much both to interest and to instruct the general reader, while
deserving the attention of the “dietetic reformer.”... The author
has made almost a life-long study of the subject.’—ENGLISH MECHANIC.




_OTHER WORKS BY MR. MATTIEU WILLIAMS._

Crown 8vo. cloth extra, 7_s._ 6_d._

SCIENCE IN SHORT CHAPTERS.


‘Few writers on popular science know better how to steer a middle
course between the Scylla of technical abstruseness and the Charybdis
of empty frivolity than Mr. Mattieu Williams. He writes for intelligent
people who are not technically scientific, and he expects them to
understand what he tells them when he has explained it to them in his
perfectly lucid fashion without any of the embellishments, in very
doubtful taste, which usually pass for popularisation. The papers are
not mere réchauffés of common knowledge. Almost all of them are marked
by original thought, and many of them contain demonstrations or aperçus
of considerable scientific value.’—PALL MALL GAZETTE.

‘There are few writers on the subjects which Mr. Williams selects whose
fertility and originality are equal to his own. We read all he has to
say with pleasure, and very rarely without profit.’—SCIENCE GOSSIP.

‘Mr. Mattieu Williams is undoubtedly able to present scientific
subjects to the popular mind with much clearness and force: and these
essays may be read with advantage by those, who, without having had
special training, are yet sufficiently intelligent to take interest in
the movement of events in the scientific world.’—ACADEMY.


Crown 8vo. cloth limp, 2_s._ 6_d._

A SIMPLE TREATISE ON HEAT.

‘This is an unpretending little work, put forth for the purpose of
expounding, in simple style, the phenomena and laws of heat. No
strength is vainly spent in endeavouring to present a mathematical view
of the subject. The Author passes over the ordinary range of matter
to be found in most elementary treatises on heat, and enlarges upon
the applications of the principles of his science—a subject which is
naturally attractive to the uninitiated. Mr. Williams’s object has
been well carried out, and his little book may be recommended to those
who care to study this interesting branch of physics.’—POPULAR SCIENCE
REVIEW.

‘We can recommend this treatise as equally exact in the information it
imparts, and pleasant in the mode of imparting it. It is neither dry
nor technical, but suited in all respects to the use of intelligent
learners.’—TABLET.

‘Decidedly a success. The language is as simple as possible,
consistently with scientific soundness, and the copiousness of
illustration with which Mr. Williams’s pages abound, derived from
domestic life and from the commonest operations of nature, will commend
this book to the ordinary reader as well as to the young student of
science.’—ACADEMY.

    London : CHATTO & WINDUS, Piccadilly, W.


Demy 8vo. cloth extra, price 7_s._ 6_d._

THE FUEL OF THE SUN.

‘The work is well deserving of careful study, especially by the
astronomer, too apt to forgot the teachings of other sciences than his
own.’—FRASER’S MAGAZINE.

‘It is characterised throughout by a carefulness of thought and an
originality that command respect, while it is based upon observed facts
and not upon mere fanciful theory.’—ENGINEERING.

‘Mr. Williams’s interesting and valuable work called “The Fuel of the
Sun.”’—POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW.


    London: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO.




THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY


    BY
    W. MATTIEU WILLIAMS
    AUTHOR OF ‘THE FUEL OF THE SUN’ ‘SCIENCE IN SHORT CHAPTERS’
    ‘A SIMPLE TREATISE ON HEAT’ ETC.

[Illustration]

    _SECOND EDITION_

    London
    CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
    1892




    PRINTED BY
    SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
    LONDON




PREFACE.


DURING the infancy of the Birmingham and Midland Institute, when
my classes in Cannon Street constituted the whole of its teaching
machinery, I delivered a course of lectures to ladies on ‘Household
Philosophy,’ in which ‘The Chemistry of Cookery’ was included. In
collecting material for these lectures, I was surprised at the strange
neglect of the subject by modern chemists.

On taking it up again, after an interval of nearly thirty years, I find
that (excepting the chemistry of wine cookery), absolutely nothing
further, worthy of the name of research, has in the meantime been
brought to bear upon it.

This explanation is demanded as an apology for what some may consider
the egotism that permeates this little work. I have been continually
compelled to put forth my own explanations of familiar phenomena, my
own speculations, concerning the changes effected by cookery, and
my own small contributions to the experimental investigation of the
subject.

Under these difficult circumstances I have endeavoured to place
before the reader a simple and readable account of what is known of
‘The Chemistry of Cookery,’ explaining technicalities as they occur,
rather than abstaining from the use of them by means of cumbrous
circumlocution or patronising baby-talk.

With a moderate effort of attention, any unlearned but intelligent
reader of either sex may understand all the contents of these chapters;
and I venture to anticipate that scientific chemists may find in them
some suggestive matter.

If these expectations are justified by results, this preliminary essay
will fulfil its double object. It will diffuse a knowledge of what
is at present knowable of ‘The Chemistry of Cookery’ among those who
greatly need it, and will contribute to the extension of such knowledge
by opening a wide and very promising field of scientific research.

I should add that the work is based on a series of papers that appeared
in ‘Knowledge’ during the years 1883 and 1884.

                                                   W. MATTIEU WILLIAMS.

    STONEBRIDGE PARK, LONDON, N.W.
    _March 1885._




CONTENTS.


    CHAPTER                                              PAGE
        I. INTRODUCTORY                                     1
       II. THE BOILING OF WATER                             8
      III. ALBUMEN                                         19
       IV. GELATIN, FIBRIN, AND THE JUICES OF MEAT         32
        V. ROASTING AND GRILLING                           47
       VI. COUNT RUMFORD’S ROASTER                         63
      VII. FRYING                                          84
     VIII. STEWING                                        111
       IX. CHEESE                                         127
        X. FAT—MILK                                       156
       XI. THE COOKERY OF VEGETABLES                      173
      XII. GLUTEN—BREAD                                   194
     XIII. VEGETABLE CASEIN AND VEGETABLE JUICES          211
      XIV. COUNT RUMFORD’S COOKERY AND CHEAP DINNERS      227
       XV. COUNT RUMFORD’S SUBSTITUTE FOR TEA AND COFFEE  245
      XVI. THE COOKERY OF WINE                            265
     XVII. THE VEGETARIAN QUESTION                        294
    XVIII. MALTED FOOD                                    303
      XIX. THE PHYSIOLOGY OF NUTRITION                    313

    INDEX                                                 325




THE

CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY.




CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.


THE philosopher who first perceived and announced the fact that all the
physical doings of man consist simply in changing the places of things,
made a very profound generalisation, and one that is worthy of more
serious consideration than it has received.

All our handicraft, however great may be the skill employed, amounts
to no more than this. The miner moves the ore and the fuel from their
subterranean resting-places, then they are moved into the furnace,
and by another moving of combustibles the working of the furnace is
started; then the metals are moved to the foundries and forges, then
under hammers, or squeezers, or into melting-pots, and thence to
moulds. The workman shapes the bars, or plates, or castings by removing
a part of their substance, and by more and more movings of material
produces the engine, which does its work when fuel and water are moved
into its fireplace and boiler.

The statue is within the rough block of marble; the sculptor merely
moves away the outer portions, and thereby renders his artistic
conception visible to his fellow-men.

The agriculturist merely moves the soil in order that it may receive
the seed, which he then moves into it, and when the growth is
completed, he moves the result, and thereby makes his harvest.

The same may be said of every other operation. Man alters the position
of physical things in such wise that the forces of Nature shall operate
upon them, and produce the changes or other results that he requires.

My reasons for this introductory digression will be easily understood,
as this view of the doings of man and the doings of Nature displays
fundamentally the business of human education, so far as the physical
proceedings and physical welfare of mankind are concerned.

It clearly points out two well-marked natural divisions of such
education—education or training in the movements to be made, and
education in a knowledge of the consequences of such movements—_i.e._
in a knowledge of the forces of Nature which actually do the work when
man has suitably arranged the materials.

The education ordinarily given to apprentices in the workshop, or
the field, or the studio—or, as relating to my present subject, the
kitchen—is the first of these, the second and equally necessary being
simply and purely the teaching of physical science as applied to the
arts.

I cannot proceed any further without a protest against a very general
(so far as this country is concerned) misuse of a now very popular
term, a misuse that is rather surprising, seeing that it is accepted
by scholars who have devoted the best of their intellectual efforts to
the study of words. I refer to the word _technical_ as applied in the
designation ‘technical education.’

So long as our workshops are separated from our science schools
and colleges, it is most desirable, in order to avoid continual
circumlocution, to have terms that shall properly distinguish between
the work of the two, and admit of definite and consistent use. The two
words are ready at hand, and, although of Greek origin, have become, by
analogous usage, plain simple English. I mean the words _technical_ and
_technological_.

The Greek noun _techne_ signifies an art, trade, or profession, and our
established usage of this root is in accordance with its signification.
Therefore, ‘technical education’ is a suitable and proper designation
of the training which is given to apprentices, &c., in the strictly
technical details of their trades, arts, or professions—_i.e._ in the
skilful moving of things. When we require a name for the science or the
philosophy of anything, we obtain it by using the Greek root _logos_,
and appending it in English form to the Greek name of the general
subject, as geology, the science of the earth; anthropology, the
science of man; biology, the science of life, &c.

Why not then follow this general usage, and adopt ‘technology’ as
the science of trades, arts, or professions, and thereby obtain
consistent and convenient terms to designate the two divisions of
education—technical education, that given in the workshop, &c., and
technological education, that which _should be_ given as supplementary
to all such technical education?

In accordance with this, the present work will be a contribution to
the technology of cookery, or to the technological education of cooks,
whose technical education is quite beyond my reach.

The kitchen is a chemical laboratory in which are conducted a number of
chemical processes by which our food is converted from its crude state
to a condition more suitable for digestion and nutrition, and made more
agreeable to the palate.

It is the _rationale_ or _ology_ of these processes that I shall
endeavour to explain; but at the outset it is only fair to say that
in many instances I shall not succeed in doing this satisfactorily,
as there still remain some kitchen mysteries that have not yet come
within the firm grasp of science. The _whole_ story of the chemical
differences between a roast, a boiled, and a raw leg of mutton has not
yet been told. You and I, gentle reader, aided by no other apparatus
than a knife and fork, can easily detect the difference between a
cut out of the saddle of a three-year-old Southdown and one from a
ten-months-old meadow-fed Leicester, but the chemist in his laboratory,
with all his reagents, test-tubes, beakers, combustion-tubes,
potash-bulbs, &c. &c., and his balance turning to one-thousandth of a
grain, cannot physically demonstrate the sources of these differences
of flavour.

Still I hope to show that modern chemistry can throw into the kitchen a
great deal of light that shall not merely help the cook in doing his or
her work more efficiently, but shall also elevate both the work and the
worker,