Science in the Kitchen. E. E. Kellogg
is in the perversion of the use of the sense of taste. Certain senses are given us to add to our pleasure as well as for the practical, almost indispensable, use they are to us. For instance, the sense of sight is not only useful, but enables us to drink in beauty, if among beautiful surroundings, without doing us any harm. The same of music and other harmonics which may come to us through the sense of hearing. But the sense of taste and was given us to distinguish between wholesome and unwholesome foods, and cannot be used for merely sensuous gratification, without debasing and making of it a gross thing. An education which demands special enjoyment or pleasure through the sense of taste, is wholly artificial; it is coming down to the animal plane, or below it rather; for the instinct of the brute creation teaches it merely to eat to live.
Yet how wide-spread is this habit of sensuous gratification through the sense of taste! If one calls upon a neighbor, he is at once offered refreshments of some kind, as though the greatest blessing of life came from indulging the appetite. This evil is largely due to wrong education, which begins with childhood. When Johnnie sits down to the table, the mother says, "Johnnie, what would you like?" instead of putting plain, wholesome food before the child, and taking it as a matter of course that he will eat it and be satisfied. The child grows to think that he must have what he likes, whether it is good for him or not. It is not strange that an appetite thus pampered in childhood becomes uncontrollable at maturity; for the step from gormandizing to intoxication is much shorter than most people imagine. The natural, unperverted taste of a child will lead him to eat that which is good for him. But how can we expect the children to reform when the parents continually set them bad examples in the matter of eating and drinking?
The cultivation of a taste for spices is a degradation of the sense of taste. Nature never designed that pleasure should be divorced from use. The effects of gratifying the sense of taste differ materially from those of gratifying the higher senses of sight and hearing. What we see is gone; nothing remains but the memory, and the same is true of the sweetest sounds which may reach us through the ears. But what we taste is taken into the stomach and what has thus given us brief pleasure through the gratification of the palate, must make work in the alimentary canal for fourteen hours before it is disposed of.
Variety in Food.—Simplicity of diet should be a point of first consideration with all persons upon whom falls the responsibility of providing the family bills of fare, since the simplest foods are, as a rule, the most healthful. Variety is needed; that is, a judicious mingling of fruits, grains, and vegetables; but the general tendency is to supply our tables with too many kinds and to prepare each dish in the most elaborate manner, until, in many households, the cooking of food has come to be almost the chief end of life. While the preparation of food should be looked upon as of so much importance as to demand the most careful consideration and thought as to its suitability, wholesomeness, nutritive qualities, and digestibility, it should by no means be made to usurp the larger share of one's time, when simpler foods and less labor would afford the partakers equal nourishment and strength.
A great variety of foods at one meal exerts a potent influence in creating a love of eating, and is likewise a constant temptation to overeat. Let us have well-cooked, nutritious, and palatable food, and plenty of it; variety from day to day, but not too great a variety at each meal.
The prevalent custom of loading the table with a great number of viands, upon occasions when guests are to be entertained in our homes, is one to be deplored, since it is neither conducive to good health nor necessary to good cheer, but on the contrary is still laborious and expensive a practice that many are debarred from social intercourse because they cannot afford to entertain after the fashion of their neighbors. Upon this subject a well-known writer has aptly said: "Simplify cookery, thus reducing the cost of living, and how many longing individuals would thereby be enabled to afford themselves the pleasure of culture and social intercourse! When the barbarous practice of stuffing one's guests shall have been abolished, a social gathering will not then imply, as it does now, hard labor, expensive outlay, and dyspepsia. Perhaps when that time arise, we shall be sufficiently civilized to demand pleasures of a higher sort. True, the entertainments will then, in one sense, be more costly, as culture is harder to come by than cake. The profusion of viands now heaped upon the table, betrays poverty of the worst sort. Having nothing better to offer, we offer victuals; and this we do with something of that complacent, satisfied air with which some more northern tribes present their tidbits of whale and walrus."
TABLE TOPICS.
"Let appetite wear reason's golden chain,
and find in due restrain its luxury."
A man's food, when he has the means and opportunity of selecting it, suggests his moral nature. Many a Christian is trying to do by prayer that which cannot be done except through corrected diet.—Talmage.
Our pious ancestors enacted a law that suicides should be buried where four roads meet, and that a cart-load of stones should be thrown upon the body. Yet, when gentlemen or ladies commit suicide, not by cord or steel, but by turtle soup or lobster salad, they may be buried on consecrated ground, and the public are not ashamed to read an epitaph upon their tombstones false enough to make the marble blush.—Horace Mann.
It is related by a gentleman who had an appointment to breakfast with the late A.T. Stewart, that the butler placed before them both an elaborate bill of fare; the visitor selected a list of rare dishes, and was quite abashed when Mr. Stewart said, "Bring me my usual breakfast—oatmeal and boiled eggs." He then explained to his friend that he found simple food a necessity to him, otherwise he could not think clearly. That unobscured brain applied to nobler ends would have won higher results, but the principle remains the same.—Sel.
Study simplicity in the number of dishes, and a variety in the character of the meals.—Sel.
I have come to the conclusion that more than half the disease which embitters life is due to avoidable errors in diet, … and that more mischief, in the form of actual disease, of impaired vigor, and of shortened life, accrues to civilized man from erroneous habits of eating than from the habitual use of alcoholic drink, considerable as I know that evil to be.—Sir Henry Thompson.
The ancient Gauls, who were a very brave, strong, and hearty race, lived very abstemiously. Their food was milk, berries, and herbs. They made bread of nuts. They had a very peculiar fashion of wearing a metal ring around the body, the size of which was regulated by act of Parliament. Any man who outgrew in circumference his metal ring was looked upon as a lazy glutton, and consequently was disgraced.
To keep in health this rule is wise:
Eat only when you need, and relish food,
chew thoroughly that it may do you good,
have it well cooked, unspiced, and undisguised.—Leonardo da Vinci/
THE DIGESTION OF FOODS.
The digestive apparatus consists of a long and tortuous tube called the alimentary canal, varying in length from twenty-five to thirty feet, along which are arranged the various digestive organs—the mouth, the stomach,