Page:Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management.djvu/149

Rh these. Formerly the art of cookery had little enough to do with either, and flourished long before chemistry and physiology in their modern acceptation were known.

But we cannot accept the common assertion that because cookery long flourished alone it should be left alone now, for the same assertion might be made respecting the application of modern science to any department of human activity.

People lived and died before the law of gravitation, or elementary mathematical truths, or the application of steam to machinery were discovered, yet these discoveries have been applied to practical industries with immense benefit to mankind. Science applied to agriculture has enabled us to support a larger population in greater comfort; science applied to food and cookery will enable us to do this and more. We can confidently look forward to a time when in the chemist's laboratory the transformation of nature's laboratory shall be imitated for the feeding of our starving millions. That goal is a very long way off, and we trace out only the first steps of the road towards it. But as we said at the outset, good cookery must always mean the successful doing or easing in the kitchen of Nature's work.

Everyday Science.—It is interesting to the student of human progress to watch for scientific discoveries, as they gradually creep from the laboratory to the treatise, from the treatise to the lecture-room, thence to the kitchen. Each operation was once carried out according to the fancy of the individual operating. Experience, not only the best, but the only teacher, taught. There were a number of isolated experiments, some repeated or handed down until they became traditions. But there was little or no generalization of the facts, and there was arbitrary declaration instead of reasonable conviction.

In cookery books of a few years ago the reader is bidden to do a thing at one time, and leave it undone on a precisely similar occasion. Delicate gradations of heat, frimometers, even thermometers, were unknown. Water boiled or simmered, was lukewarm or cold, as if the four words comprehended all the variations of temperature, or at any rate were fixed points having magical effect upon every substance used as food. Only a few—a very few—scientific facts have been as yet applied to everyday cookery. The genealogy of each might probably be traced from the treatise to the lecture, thence to one book, now to all. It is curious also to see that there are some processes in cookery for which every one now assigns a reason, while others, equally common, every one is content to follow unreasoning. It is safe to assert that supporting or condemning all such processes there is scientific fact, and if every intelligent cook would try to find out the reason for what is done, our knowledge would soon emerge from its present chaotic condition.