Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 23.djvu/230

218 not, when eaten by ordinary mortals, do so much nutritive work. Why is this?

It is a matter of preparation—not exactly what is called cooking, but equivalent to what cooking should be. It is the preparation which has converted the grass-food of the ox into another kind of food which we can assimilate very easily.

The fact that we use the digestive and nutrient apparatus of sheep, oxen, etc., for the preparation of our food is merely a transitory barbarism, to be ultimately superseded when my present subject is sufficiently understood and applied to enable us to prepare the constituents of the vegetable kingdom in such a manner that they shall be as easily assimilated as the prepared grass which we call beef and mutton, and which we now use only on account of our ignorance of "The Chemistry of Cooking."

As this is one of the most rudimentary of the operations of cookery, and the most frequently performed, it naturally takes a first place in treating the subject.

"Water is boiled in the kitchen for two distinct purposes: 1. For the cooking of itself; 2. For the cooking of other things. A dissertation on the difference between raw water and cooked water may appear pedantic, but, as I shall presently show, it is considerable, very practical, and important.

The best way to study any physical subject is to examine it experimentally, but this is not always possible with every-day means. In this case, however, there is no difficulty.

Take a thin glass vessel, such as a flask, or, better, one of the "beakers," or thin, tumbler-shaped vessels, so largely used in chemical laboratories; partially fill it with ordinary household water, and then place it over the flame of a spirit-lamp, or Bunsen's, or other smokeless gas-burner. Carefully watch the result, and the following will be observed: First of all little bubbles will be formed, adhering to the sides of the glass, but ultimately rising to the surface, and there becoming dissipated by diffusion in the air.

This is not boiling, as may be proved by trying the temperature with the finger. What, then, is it?

It is the yielding back of the atmospheric gases which the water has dissolved or condensed within itself. These bubbles have been collected and by analysis proved to consist of oxygen, nitrogen, and carbonic acid, obtained from the air; but in the water they exist by no means in the same proportions as originally in the air, nor in