starvation upon thousands of themselves last
winter: '' In the supplies of a body of troops,
extract of meat would offer to the severely
wounded soldier a means of invigoration which,
with a little wine, would instantly restore his
powers, exhausted by great loss of blood,
and admit of his removal to the nearest
field-hospital." " What more invigorating
remedy," exclaims Proust, another experienced
dietetic physiologist, " what more
powerfully acting panacea than a portion of
genuine extract of meat, dissolved in a glass
of noble wine? The most recherché delicacies
of gastronomy are all for the spoiled children
of wealth. Ought we then to have nothing
in our field-hospitals for the unfortunate
soldier, whose fate condemns him to suffer
for our benefit the horrors of the long death-
struggle, amidst snow, and mud, and
swamps?"

In this prejudiced country, the idea
connected with soup is, that it is a poor,
washy, meagre sort of food, not at all worthy
of the true-born Briton. But this idea is
erroneous, even when applied to soup made
without meat and entirely of vegetables.
Upon such soup, millions of people on the
Continent almost entirely exist. It is true
they are not so muscular as people who have
access to meat, because vegetables, producing
in the human body chiefly blood and flesh, yield
muscle sparingly. Neither do the herbs
of the field furnish the weakly nutriment
that most of our beef-loving countrymen
imagine. The horse is not a weakling,
neither is the elephant; yet both are strict
vegetarians. Nature makes them so; but
she has given to man a dentition and a
stomach for flesh; and flesh he had better
have— when he can get it. But, because man
can do without it, he is a bad reasoner who
reduces himself to the condition of a joyless
vegetarian. Vegetables do not offer sufficient
resistance to the incisors and canines of man
for perfectly healthy existence. So thoroughly
is mastication a law of nature, that Count
Romford's mendicants pined upon copious
rations of excellent soup, until the Count
discovered that Nature resented the idleness
of their teeth. He added to each portion
crusty bread toasted hard, and his paupers
became plump.

Meat soup is, of course, better than soup
maigre; but soup maigre is better than
starvation. And we venture to assert that
starvation is the lot of thousands in this
country, in consequence of a stolid prejudice
against utilising all sorts of leguminous,
and even of adipose matter, by making soup
of it.

"We might save almost as much in our
cooking as Count Romford saved in his, both
of food and fuel, if we were wiser in our
methods. If we always cooked in close vessels,
and never opened the lid— whereby a
large volume (seven-eighths) of absolute
nutriment escapes up the chimney; if we
cooked with slow fires, letting things simmer
rather than boil, and if we roasted slowly and
thoroughly. Or if, with a hot fire at first,
then suffering the heat to diminish gradually
—which makes the meat become aromatic and
tender— remembering, too, to preserve the fat,
by covering it with paper, as joints of venison
are covered; above all, if we made use of
every known article of food, we should save
one third of our present expenditure, and
have more food and more pleasure into
the bargain. As soon as one day's dinner
of stew or soup is ended, the pan might be
wiped out clean, and the next day's meat or
"stock" set to simmer on the hob or in the oven.
Housewives who do not know that secret
would be surprised to find how much good
they would get from it. Thirty-six legs of
mutton, weighing two hundred and eighty-
eight pounds, were once cooked for one shilling
and two-pence in a gas stove. And this economy
was not due only to the material of fuel,
but to the manner of cooking. We cannot
repeat it too often— small fires and close stoves
are what we want; not yawning caverns of
flame, with all the heat and half the nutriment
roaring up the chimney; but little
holes, as in France, where a few bits of charcoal
cook, with patience, such delicious stews
and soups and ragoûts as all our tons of coals
and gallons of galloping water never can
accomplish. Look at our gridirons! First, we
must have a clear fire,— only to be got at
by a vast expenditure of fuel and quantities
of salt; and when made, for what? For
all the fat to drip wasting on the coals,
doing no good to any one,— for so much
waste, in fact.

There is a wide field for economy, too, in
bread. Brown bread is used in the houses of
the rich as a luxury,— the poor will not touch
it. Yet unsifted wheaten flour is infinitely the
best as an article of food. Liebig says that
bolted flour is a "matter of luxury, and injurious
rather than beneficial as regards the
nutritive power of bread." And as the mass
of bread is increased one-fifth by being
unbolted, there is surely an additional reason
why the poor should use it. The finest
American flour is perhaps the best in point
of nutritive quality; but then it is more
expensive than unbolted flour, which stands
next to meat. Except the juice of meat, says
Liebig, nothing is so near the fibrine of flesh
as the gluten of wheat. Many thousand
hundred-weights of the finest and purest flour
in England are turned into starch, to dress
cotton goods with; and the gluten, which is
the refuse of this manufacture, amounting to
twelve or twenty per cent. of the dried flour,
is lost as food for man. Its nutritive power
may be estimated when we know that in an
experiment made by the Academicians in
France, dogs were fed for ninety days exclusively
on the gluten of wheat, devoured raw,
and at the end of the time they were sleek,
healthy, and in perfectly good condition.