Page:Treatise on Cultivation of the Potato.djvu/40

 not seen it, I wanted to dry the potato like a Normandy pippin, keeping together all its nutritious matters; and all the time I had been separating it into its liquid and solid constituents. Use the separated solid constituents in the usual manner for the production of starch, sugar and spirit, and make use of the liquid flesh-forming constituents for cattle-food (heretofore lost) and the thing is done—and so it was. Or condense the liquid constituents by evaporation, like sugar-cane juice, or like the syrup of the potato itself, and the result is the "extract of meat," plus a little lime—the complete condensation of the whole of the potato in a form capable of preservation for ever—the absolutely perfect solution of the task I had set before myself ten years before. At first sight it seems curious, the extraction of the "extract of meat" from a vegetable; but a glance shows that it cannot be otherwise. The animal obtained its "extract of meat" from the vegetable; and these processes merely obtain the same substances direct from the vegetable, without the intervention of the animal; and I believe, when we shall have full crops of potatoes free of disease, (as we shall have I think in a few years more,) it may become available as food for man. The juice, when condensed under atmospheric pressure, has the flavour a little touched by the heat; but evaporate it in vacuo and I expect that that defect will be obviated. I may state that I have often eaten soup made of this extract, and have found it to have the same effect on my system as the extract of meat. Both of them taken in large quantities affect the action of the heart perceptibly, and in the same manner:—this result being due, no doubt, to the large quantity of potash which both contain. The smell and taste of both are the same:—the analyses are as follows:—