The cooking of any article of food has evidently much, very much, to do with its digestibility.  It is not the purpose of this paper to teach cooking, but merely to give some general hints as to the best as well as the simplest methods of preparing staple articles of food.  The same articles of food can and should be prepared differently on each day of the week.  Changes of diet are too likely to be underestimated.  By constant change the digestive organs in the average person are prevented from having that repulsion of food which, to a greater or less extent, is likely to result from a sameness of diet continued for a long time.

We often hear from our scientific men that this or that article of food is excellent for muscle, another for brain, another for bone, etc., etc.  Now, stubborn facts are like stone walls, against which theories often butt out their beauty and their power.  It is well known to almost every one nowadays that well-cooked food, whether it be potatoes, meat and bread, fish, or anything else worthy the name of food, will well maintain, indefinitely, either the philosopher or the hodcarrier.

Many of you know, and all of you ought to know, that the principal ingredients of nearly all our foods are starch and albumen.  Starch is the principal nutritive ingredient of vegetables and breadstuffs.  Albumen is the principal ingredient of meats, eggs, milk, and other animal derivatives.

Starch never enters the system as starch, but must first be converted into sugar either in the body or out of it.  The process of this transformation of starch into sugar is beautifully exemplified in certain plants, such as the beet, the so-called sugar cane, and other growths.  The young plant is, to a great extent, composed of starch; as the plant grows older, a substance is produced which is called diastase.  Through the influence of this diastase the starch is converted into a peculiar non-crystallizable substance called dextrine, and as the plant matures, this dextrine is transformed into crystallizable sugar.

“Dextrine is a substance that can be produced from starch by the action of dilute acids, alkalies, and malt extract, and by roasting it at a temperature between 284 deg. and 330 deg.  F., till it is of a light brown color, and has the odor of overbaked bread.”

A simple form of dextrine may be found in the brown crust of bread—­that sweetish substance that gives the crust its agreeable flavor.  Pure dextrine is an insipid, odorless, yellowish-white, translucent substance, which dissolves in water almost as readily as sugar.  As stated above, it is easily converted into dextrose, or glucose, as it is usually named.

This glucose is often sold under the name of sugar, and is the same against which so many of the newspapers waged such a war a year or two ago.  These critics were evidently, for the most part, persons who knew little about the subject.  Glucose, if free from sulphuric acid or other chemicals, is as harmless as any other form of sugar.  Most of our candies contain more or less of it, and are in every way as satisfactory as when manufactured wholly from other sugars.