Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 24.djvu/706

668 obtaining suitable vessels for the final frying or baking, as each portion should be poured into, and fried or baked in, a separate dish, so that each may, as in Switzerland, have his own fondu complete, and eat it from the dish as it comes from the fire. As demand creates supply, our ironmongers, etc., will soon learn to meet this demand if it arises. I am about writing to Messrs. Griffiths & Browett, of Birmingham, large manufacturers of what is technically called "hollow-ware"—i. e., vessels of all kinds knocked up from a single piece of metal without any soldering and have little doubt that they will speedily produce suitable fondu dishes according to my specification, and supply them to the shopkeepers.

The bicarbonate of potash is an original novelty that will possibly alarm some of my non-chemical readers. I advocate its use for two reasons: First, it effects a better solution of the casein by neutralizing the free lactic acid that inevitably exists in milk supplied to towns, and any free acid that may remain in the cheese. At a farm-house where the milk is just drawn from the cow it is unnecessary for this purpose, as such new milk is itself slightly alkaline. My second reason is physiological, and of greater weight. Salts of potash are necessary constituents of human food. They exist in all kinds of wholesome vegetables and fruits, and in the juices of fresh meat, but they are wanting in cheese, having, on account of their great solubility, been left behind in the whey.

This absence of potash appears to me to be the one serious objection to the free use of cheese-diet. The Swiss peasant escapes the mischief by his abundant salads, which eaten raw contain all their potash salts, instead of leaving the greater part in the saucepan, as do cabbages, etc., when cooked in boiling water. In Norway, where salads are scarce, the bonder and his housemen have at times suffered greatly from scurvy, especially in the far north, and would be severely victimized but for special remedies that they use (the mottebeer, cranberry, etc., grown and preserved especially for the purpose. The Laplanders make a broth of scurvy-grass and similar herbs). Mr. Lang attributes their recent immunity from scurvy, which was once a sore plague among them, to the introduction of the potato.

Scurvy on board ship results from eating salt meat, the potash of which has escaped by exosmosis into the brine or pickle. The sailor now escapes it by drinking citrate, of potash in the form of lime-juice, and by alternating salt-junk with rations of tinned meats.

I once lived for six days on bread and cheese only, tasting no other food. I had, in company with C. M. Clayton, son of the Senator of Delaware (who negotiated the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty), taken a passage from Malta to Athens in a little schooner, and expecting a three days' journey we took no other rations than a lump of Cheshire cheese and a supply of bread. Bad weather doubled the expected length of our journey.