Valuable Facts the Housewife Must Know in Preparing Food

The first chemist in the world was without doubt a woman, if we suppose that our mother Eve did the cooking for her husband Adam and her children. And what is beyond doubt is that the kitchen may be counted the ordinary chemical laboratory of the world, for in it children begin to learn the art of cooking from their mothers. And here the following question comes to my mind: why must we cook our food, when the animals do not resort to this method in preparing theirs?

Yes, we cook our food because some of its substances are indigestible if taken raw. But our cooking of certain foodstuffs causes their ruin, when it would have been better to eat them raw. We know that the starch of wheat and potatoes is stored in them in sacs or granules of cellulose, so that we can gain no benefit from them unless they are boiled in water over the fire or roasted until the cellulose casings burst open.

The same thing holds true of egg white. I long believed that raw egg white, if well mixed with milk, was more beneficial than if it were cooked. But this is a mistake, for the human body cannot digest egg white except when it is cooked.

The cooking of vegetables is a complicated and delicate operation, for cooking them in hard water rich in lime salts gives them additional limy matter over and above what is in them; and besides being unwanted when it settles as a stony layer inside the teakettle when this water is boiled in it, a part of it settles in the same way upon vegetables boiled in this hard water.

Some housewives use soda — that is, carbonate of soda — in cooking vegetables to help them cook quickly, not knowing that this substance kills the vitamin B in the vegetables, which is the principal substance for whose sake these vegetables are eaten. And though the cooking or boiling of potatoes is necessary to ease the digestion of the starch, this kills half the vitamin C in them if the potatoes are peeled; whereas if they are boiled unpeeled, they lose 15 percent of this vital substance, which is the easiest of the vital substances in foodstuffs. All plants contain chemical substances apt to destroy this vitamin if they are cut into small pieces, or cooked in cold water, or put into the water before it has boiled.

And here is a last precious observation for you: an ordinary helping of cooked vegetables contains a greater quantity of this vitamin than if you took the same weight of vegetables raw — despite the fact that a portion of the vitamin C is destroyed by heat. The reason is that you can take a large quantity of cooked vegetables, equal to four times their bulk raw.