Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/106

96 over which they might be spread before their particular flavor disappeared. He concluded that a red-herring has the highest specific sapidity—i. e., the greatest amount of agreeable flavor in a given weight of any kind of food he had tested—and that, comparing it on the basis of cost for cost, its superiority is still greater.

He tells us that "the pleasure of eating depends very much indeed upon the manner in which the food is applied to the organs of taste," and that he considers "it necessary to mention, and even to illustrate in the clearest manner, every circumstance which appears to have influence in producing these important effects." As an example of this, I may quote his instructions for eating hasty-pudding: "The pudding is then eaten with a spoon, each spoonful of it being dipped into the sauce before it is carried to the mouth, care being had in taking it up to begin on the outside, or near the brim of the plate, and to approach the center by regular advances, in order not to demolish too soon the excavation which forms the reservoir for the sauce." His solid Indian-corn pudding is, in like manner, "to be eaten with a knife and fork, beginning at the circumference of the slice, and approaching regularly toward the center, each piece of pudding being taken up with the fork, and dipped into the butter, or dipped into it in part only, before it is carried to the mouth."

As a supplement to the cheap soup receipts given in my last, I will quote one which Rumford gives as the cheapest food which, in his opinion, can be provided in England: Take of water eight gallons, mix it with five pounds of barley-meal, boil it to the consistency of a thick jelly. Season with salt, vinegar, pepper, sweet-herbs, and four red-herrings pounded in a mortar. Instead of bread, add five pounds of Indian corn made into a samp, and stir it together with a ladle. Serve immediately in portions of twenty ounces.

Samp is "said to have been invented by the savages of North America, who have no corn-mills." It is Indian corn deprived of its external coat, by soaking it ten or twelve hours in a lixivium of water and wood-ashes. This coat or husk, being separated from the kernel, rises to the surface of the water, while the grain remains at the bottom. This separated kernel is stewed for about two days in a kettle of water placed near the fire. "When sufficiently cooked, the kernels will be found to be swelled to a great size and burst open, and this food, which is uncommonly sweet and nourishing, may be used in a great variety of ways; but the best way of using it is to mix it with milk, and with soups and broths, as a substitute for bread." He prefers it to bread, because "it requires more mastication, and consequently tends more to prolong the pleasure of eating."