I now come to a very important constituent of animal food, although it is not contained in beef, mutton, pork, poultry, game, fish, or any other organised animal substance, unless in egg yolk, as Lehmann states (see page 23). It is not even proved satisfactorily to exist in the blood, although it is somehow obtained from the blood by special glands at certain periods. I refer to casein, the substantial basis of cheese, which, as everybody knows, is the consolidated curd of milk.

It is evident at once that casein must exist in two forms, the soluble and insoluble, so far as the common solvent, water, is concerned. It exists in the soluble form, and completely dissolved in milk, and insoluble in cheese. When precipitated in its insoluble or coagulated form as the curd of new milk it carries with it the fatty matter or cream, and therefore, in order to study its properties in a state of purity, we must obtain it otherwise. This may be done by allowing the fat globules of the milk to float to the surface, and then removing them by separating the cream as by the ordinary dairy method. We thus obtain in the skimmed milk a solution of casein, but there still remains some of the fat. This may be removed by evaporating the solution down to solidity, and then dissolving out the fat by means of ether, which leaves the soluble casein behind. The adhering ether being evaporated, we have a fairly pure specimen of casein in its original or soluble form.

This, when dry, is an amber-coloured translucent substance, devoid of odour, and insipid. The insipidity and absence of odour of the pure and separated casein are noteworthy, as showing that the condition in which it exists in milk is very different from that of the casein of cheese. My object in pointing this out is to show that in the course of the manufacture of cheese new properties are developed. Skim-milk—a solution of casein—is tasteless and inodorous, while fresh cheese, whether made from skimmed or whole milk, has a very decided flavour and odour.

If we now add some of our dry casein to water, it dissolves, forming a yellowish viscid fluid, which, on evaporation, becomes covered with a slight film of insoluble casein, which may be readily drawn off. Some of my readers will recognise in this description the resemblance of a now well-known domestic preparation of soluble casein, condensed milk, where it is mixed with much cream, and in the ordinary preparation also much sugar. The cream dilutes the yellowness, but does not quite mask it, and the viscidity is shown by the strings which follow the spoon when a spoonful is lifted. If a concentrated solution of pure casein is exposed to the air it rapidly putrefies, and passes through a series of changes that I must not tarry to describe, beyond stating that ammonia is given off, and some crystalline substances, such as leucine, tyrosine, &c., very interesting to the physiological chemist, but not important in the kitchen, are formed.

A solution of casein in water is not coagulated by boiling; it may be repeatedly evaporated to dryness and redissolved. Upon this depends the practicability of preserving milk by evaporating it down, or ‘condensing.’

This condensed milk, however, loses a little; its albumen is sacrificed, as everybody will understand who has dipped a spoon in freshly-boiled milk and observed the skin which the spoon removes from the surface. This is coagulated albumen.

If alcohol is added to a concentrated solution of casein in water, a pseudo-coagulation occurs; the casein is precipitated as a white substance like coagulated albumen, but if only a little alcohol is used, the solid may be redissolved in water; if, however, it is thus treated with strong alcohol, the casein becomes difficult of solution, or even quite insoluble. Alcohol added to solid soluble casein renders it opaque, and gives it the appearance of coagulated albumen. The alcohol itself dissolves a little of this.

The characteristic coagulation of casein, or its conversion from the soluble to the insoluble form, is produced rather mysteriously by rennet. Acids generally precipitate it either from aqueous solution or from milk. The coagulation effected by mineral acids from aqueous solutions is not so complete as that produced by lactic acid from milk, or vinegar, the former coagulum being more readily redissolved by alkalies or weaker basic substances than the latter.

A calf has four stomachs, the fourth being that which corresponds to ours, both in structure and functions. It is lined with a membrane from which is secreted the gastric juice and other fluids concerned in effecting the conversion of food into chyme. A weak infusion made from a small piece of this ‘mucous membrane’ will coagulate the casein of three thousand times its own quantity of milk, or the coagulation may be effected by placing a small piece of the stomach (usually salted and dried for the purpose) in the milk, and warming it for a few hours.

Many theoretical attempts have been made to explain this action of the rennet. Simon and Liebig suppose that it acts primarily as a ferment, converting the sugar of milk into lactic acid, and that this lactic acid coagulates the casein. This theory has been controverted by Selmi and others, but the balance of evidence is decidedly in its favour. The coagulation which occurs in the living stomach when milk is taken as food appears to be due to the lactic acid of the gastric juice.

Casein, when thoroughly coagulated by rennet, then purified and dried, is a hard and yellowish hornlike substance. It softens and swells in water, but does not dissolve therein, nor in alcohol nor weak acids. Strong mineral acids decompose it. Alkalies dissolve it readily, and if concentrated, decompose it on the application of heat. When moderately heated, it softens and may be drawn into threads, and becomes elastic; at a higher temperature it fuses, swells up, carbonises, and develops nearly the same products of distillation as the other protein compounds.

Note the differences between this and the soluble casein above described, viz. that obtained by simply removing the fat from the milk, then evaporating away the water, but using no rennet.

I have good and sufficient reasons for thus specifying the properties of this constituent of food. I regard it as the most important of all that I have to describe in connection with my subject—the science of cookery. It contains (as I shall presently show) more nutritious material than any other food that is ordinarily obtainable, and its cookery is singularly neglected, is practically an unknown art, especially in this country. We commonly eat it raw, although in its raw state it is peculiarly indigestible, and in the only cooked form familiarly known among us here, that of a Welsh rabbit, or rarebit, it is too often rendered still more indigestible, though this need not be the case.

Here, in this densely-populated country, where we import so much of our food, cheese demands our most profound attention. The difficulties and cost of importing all kinds of meat, fish, and poultry are great, while cheese may be cheaply and deliberately brought to us from any part of the world where cows or goats can be fed, and it can be stored more readily and kept longer than other kinds of animal food. All that is required to render it, next to bread, the staple food of Britons is scientific cookery.

If I shall be able, in what is to follow, to impart to my fellow-countrymen, and more especially countrywomen, my own convictions concerning the cookability, and consequent improved digestibility, of cheese, I shall have ‘done the State some service!’

Taking muscular fibre without bone—i.e. selected best part of the meat—beef contains on an average 72½ per cent. of water; mutton, 73½; veal, 74½; pork, 69¾; fowl, 73¾; while Cheshire cheese contains only 30?, and other cheeses about the same. Thus, at starting, we have in every pound of cheese rather more than twice as much solid food as in a pound of the best meat, or comparing with the average of the whole carcass, including bone, tendons, &c., the cheese has an advantage of three to one.

The following results of Mulder’s analysis of casein, when compared with those by the same chemist of albumen, gelatin and fibrin, show that there is but little difference in the ultimate chemical composition of these, so far as the constituents there named are concerned:

We may therefore conclude that, regarding these from the point of view of nitrogenous or flesh-forming, and carbonaceous or heat-giving constituents, these chief materials of flesh and of cheese are about equal.

The same is the case as regards the fat. The quantity in the carcass of oxen, calves, sheep, lambs, and pigs varies, according to Dr. Edward Smith, from 16 per cent. to 31·3 per cent. in moderately fatted animals; while in whole-milk cheeses it varies from 21·68 per cent. to 32·31 per cent., coming down in skim-milk cheeses as low as 6·3. Dr. Smith includes NeufchÂtel cheese, containing 18·74 per cent., among the whole-milk cheeses. He does not seem to be aware that the cheese made up between straws and sold under that name is a ricotta, or crude curd of skim-milk cheese. Its just value is about threepence per pound. In Italy, where it forms the basis of some delicious dishes (such as budino di ricotta[11]), it is sold for about twopence per pound, or less.

There is a discrepancy in the published analyses of casein which demands explanation here, as it is of great practical importance. They generally correspond to the above of Mulder within small fractions, as shown below in those of Scherer and Dumas:

In these the 100 parts are made up without any phosphate of lime, while, according to Lehmann (‘Physiological Chemistry,’ vol. i. p. 379, Cavendish Edition), ‘casein that has not been treated with acids contains about 6 per cent. of phosphate of lime; more, consequently, than is contained in any of the protein compounds we have hitherto considered.’

From this it appears that we may have casein with, and casein without, this necessary constituent of food. In precipitating casein for laboratory analysis, acids are commonly used, and thus the phosphate of lime is dissolved out; but I am unable at present to tell my readers the precise extent to which this actually occurs in practical cheese-making where rennet is used. What I have at present learned only indicates generally that this constituent of cheese is very variable; and I hereby suggest to those chemists who are professionally concerned in the analysis of food, that they may supply a valuable contribution to our knowledge of this subject by simply determining the phosphate of lime contained in the ash of different kinds of cheese. I would do this myself, but, having during some ten years past nearly forsaken the laboratory for the writing-table, I have not the leisure for such work; and, worse still, have not that prime essential to practical research (especially of endowed research), a staff of obedient assistants to do the drudgery.

The comparison specially demanded is between cheeses made with rennet, and those Dutch and factory cheeses the curd of which has been precipitated by hydrochloric acid. Theoretical considerations point to the conclusion that in the latter much or even all of the phosphate of lime may be left in solution in the whey, and thus the food-value of the cheese seriously lowered. We must, however, suspend judgment in the meantime.

In comparing the nutritive value of cheese with that of flesh, the retention of this phosphate of lime corresponds with the retention of some of the juices of the meat, among which are the phosphates of the flesh.

These phosphates of lime are the bone-making material of food, and have something to do in building up the brain and nervous matter, though not to the extent that is supposed by those who imagine that there is a special connection between phosphorus and the brain, or phosphorescence and spirituality. Bone contains about eleven per cent. of phosphorus, brain less than one per cent.

The value of food in reference to its phosphate of lime is not merely a matter of percentage, as this salt may exist in a state of solution, as in milk, or as a solid very difficult of assimilation, as in bones. That retained in cheese is probably in an intermediate condition—not actually in solution, but so finely divided as to be readily dissolved by the acid of the gastric juice.

I may mention, in reference to this, that when a child or other young animal takes its natural food in the form of milk, the milk is converted into unpressed cheese, or curd, prior to its digestion.

Supposing that, on an average, cheese contains only one-half of the 6 per cent. of phosphate of lime found, as above, in the casein, and taking into consideration the water contained in flesh, the bone, &c., we may conclude generally that one pound of average cheese contains as much nutriment as three pounds of the average material of the carcass of an ox or sheep as prepared for sale by the butcher; or otherwise stated, a cheese of 20 lbs. weight contains as much food as a sheep weighing 60 lbs. as it hangs in the butcher’s shop.

Now comes the practical question. Can we assimilate or convert into our own substance the cheese-food as easily as we may the flesh-food?

I reply that we certainly cannot, if the cheese is eaten raw; but have no doubt that we may, if it be suitably cooked. Hence the paramount importance of this part of my subject. A Swiss or Scandinavian mountaineer can and does digest and assimilate raw cheese as a staple article of food, and proves its nutritive value by the result; but feebler bipeds of the plains and towns cannot do the like.

I may here mention that I have recently made some experiments on the dissolving of cheese by adding sufficient alkali (carbonate of potash) to neutralise the acid it contains, in order to convert the casein into its original soluble form as it existed in the milk, and have partially succeeded both with water and milk as solvents; but before reporting these results in detail I will describe some of the practically-established methods of cooking cheese that are so curiously unknown or little known in this country.

In the fatherland of my grandfather, Louis Gabriel Mattieu, one of the commonest dishes of the peasant who tills his own freehold and grows his own food is a fondu. This is a mixture of cheese and eggs, the cheese grated and beaten into the egg as in making omelettes, with a small addition of new milk or butter. It is placed in a little pan like a flower-pot saucer, cooked gently, served as it comes off the fire, and eaten from the vessel in which it is cooked. I have made many a hearty dinner on one of these, plus a lump of black bread and a small bottle of genuine but thin wine; the cost of the whole banquet at a little auberge being usually less than sixpence. The cheese is in a pasty condition, and partly dissolved in the milk or butter. I have tested the sustaining power of such a meal by doing some very stiff mountain climbing and long fasting after it. It is rather too good—over nutritious—for a man only doing sedentary work.

A diluted and delicate modification of this may be made by taking slices of bread, or bread and butter, soaking them in a batter made of eggs and milk—without flour—then placing the slices of soaked bread in a pie-dish, covering each with a thick coating of grated cheese, and thus building up a stratified deposit to fill the dish. The surplus batter may be poured over the top; or if time is allowed for saturation, the trouble of preliminary soaking may be saved by simply pouring all the batter thus. This, when gently baked, supplies a delicious and highly nutritious dish. We call it ‘cheese pudding’ at home, but my own experience convinces me that we make a mistake in using it to supplement the joint. It is far too nutritious for this; its savoury character tempts one to eat it so freely that it would be far wiser to use it as the Swiss peasant uses his fondu—i.e. as the substantial dish of a wholesome dinner.

I have tested its digestibility by eating it heartily for supper. No nightmare has followed. If I sup on a corresponding quantity of raw cheese my sleep is miserably eventful.

A correspondent writes as follows from the Charlotte Square Young Ladies’ Institution: ‘I have been trying the various ways of cooking cheese mentioned in your articles in “Knowledge,” and have one or two improvements to suggest in the making of cheese pudding. I find the result is much better when the bread is grated like the cheese, and thoroughly mixed with it; then the batter poured over both. I think you will also find it better when baked in a shallow tin, such as is used for Yorkshire pudding. This gives more of the browned surface, which is the best of it. Another improvement is to put some of the crumbled bread (on paper) in the oven till brown, and eat with it (as for game). I have not succeeded in making any improvement in the fondu (see page 139), which is delightful.’

My recollections of the fondu of the Swiss peasant being so eminently satisfactory on all points—nutritive or sustaining value, appetising flavour and economy—I have sought for a recipe in several cookery-books, and find at last a near approach to it in an old edition of Mrs. Rundell’s ‘Domestic Cookery.’ A similar dish is described in that useful book ‘Cre-Fydd’s Family Fare,’ under the name of ‘Cheese SoufflÉ or Fondu.’[12] I had looked for it in more pretentious works, especially in the most pretentious and the most disappointing one I have yet been tempted to purchase, viz. the 27th edition of Francatelli’s ‘Modern Cook,’ a work which I cannot recommend to anybody who has less than 20,000l. a year and a corresponding luxury of liver.

Amidst all the culinary monstrosities of these ‘high-class’ manuals, I fail to find anything concerning the cookery of cheese that is worth the attention of my readers. Francatelli has, under the name of ‘Eggs À la Suisse,’ a sort of fondu, but decidedly inferior to the common fondu of the humble Swiss osteria, as Francatelli lays the eggs upon slices of cheese, and prescribes especially that the yolks shall not be broken; omits the milk, but substitutes (for high-class extravagance’ sake, I suppose) ‘a gill of double cream,’ to be poured over the top. Thus the cheese is not intermingled with the egg, lest it should spoil the appearance of the unbroken yolks, its casein is made leathery instead of being dissolved, and the substitution of sixpenny worth of double cream for a halfpenny worth of milk supplies the high-class victim with fivepence halfpenny worth of biliary derangement.

In GouffÉ’s ‘Royal Cookery Book’ (the Household Edition of which contains a great deal that is really useful to an English housewife) I find a better recipe under the name of ‘Cheese SoufflÉs.’ He says: ‘Put two ounces and a quarter of flour in a stewpan, with one pint and a half of milk; season with salt and pepper; stew over the fire till boiling, and should there be any lumps, strain the soufflÉ paste through a tammy cloth; add seven ounces of grated Parmesan cheese, and seven yolks of eggs; whip the whites till they are firm, and add them to the mixture; fill some paper cases with it, and bake in the oven for fifteen minutes.’

Cre-Fydd says: ‘Grate six ounces of rich cheese (Parmesan is the best); put it into an enamelled saucepan, with a teaspoonful of flour of mustard, a saltspoonful of white pepper, a grain of cayenne, the sixth part of a nutmeg, grated, two ounces of butter, two tablespoonfuls of baked flour, and a gill of new milk; stir it over a slow fire till it becomes like smooth, thick cream (but it must not boil); add the well-beaten yolks of six eggs, beat for ten minutes, then add the whites of the eggs beaten to a stiff froth; put the mixture into a tin or a cardboard mould, and bake in a quick oven for twenty minutes. Serve immediately.’

Here is a true cookery of cheese by solution, and the result is an excellent dish. But there is some unnecessary complication and kitchen pedantry involved. The soufflÉ part of the business is a mere puffing up of the mixture for the purpose of displaying the cleverness of the cook, being quite useless to the consumer, as it subsides before it can be eaten. It further involves practical mischief, as it cannot be obtained without toasting the surface of the cheese into an air-tight leathery skin that is abnormally indigestible. The following is my own simplified recipe:

Take a quarter of a pound of grated cheese; add it to a gill of milk in which is dissolved as much powdered bicarbonate of potash as will stand upon a threepenny-piece; mustard, pepper, &c., as prescribed above by Cre-Fydd.[13] Heat this carefully until the cheese is completely dissolved. Then beat up three eggs, yolks and whites together, and add them to this solution of cheese, stirring the whole. Now take a shallow metal or earthenware dish or tray that will bear heating; put a little butter on this, and heat the butter till it frizzles. Then pour the mixture into the tray, and bake or fry it until it is nearly solidified.

A cheaper dish may be made by increasing the proportion of cheese—say, six to eight ounces to three eggs, or only one egg to a quarter of a pound of cheese for a hard-working man with powerful digestion.

Mr. E. D. Girdlestone writes as follows (I quote with permission): ‘As regards the “cheese fondu,” your recipe for which has enabled me to turn cheese to practical account as food, you may be glad to hear that it has become a common dish in our microscopic mÉnage. Indeed cheese, which formerly was poison to me, is now alike pleasant and digestible. But some of your readers may like to know that the addition of bread-crumbs is, in my judgment at least, a great improvement, giving greater lightness to the compost, and removing the harshness of flavour otherwise incidental to a mixture which comprises so large a proportion of cheese. We (my wife and I) think this a great improvement.’

I have received two other letters making, quite independently, the same suggestion concerning the bread-crumbs. I have tried the addition, and agree with Mr. Girdlestone that it is a great improvement as food for such as ourselves, who are brain-workers, and for all others whose occupations are at all sedentary. The undiluted fondu is too nutritious for us, though suitable for the mountaineer.

The chief difficulty in preparing this dish conveniently is that of obtaining suitable vessels for the final frying or baking, as each portion should be poured into, and fried or baked in, a separate dish, so that each may, as in Switzerland, have his own fondu complete, and eat it from the dish as it comes from the fire. As demand creates supply, our ironmongers, &c., will soon learn to meet this demand if it arises. I have written to Messrs. Griffiths & Browett, of Birmingham, large manufacturers of what is technically called ‘hollow ware’—i.e. vessels of all kinds knocked up from a single piece of metal without any soldering—and they have made suitable fondu dishes according to my specification, and supply them to the shopkeepers.

The bicarbonate of potash is an original novelty that will possibly alarm some of my non-chemical readers. I advocate its use for two reasons: first, it effects a better solution of the casein by neutralising the free lactic acid that inevitably exists in milk supplied to towns, and any free acid that may remain in the cheese. At a farmhouse, where the milk is just drawn from the cow, it is unnecessary for this purpose, as such new milk is itself slightly alkaline.

My second reason is physiological, and of greater weight. Salts of potash are necessary constituents of human food. They exist in all kinds of wholesome vegetables and fruits, and in the juices of fresh meat, but they are wanting in cheese, having, on account of their great solubility, been left behind in the whey.

This absence of potash appears to me to be the one serious objection to the free use of cheese diet. The Swiss peasant escapes the mischief by his abundant salads, which eaten raw contain all their potash salts, instead of leaving the greater part in the saucepan, as do cabbages, &c., when cooked in boiling water. In Norway, where salads are scarce, the bonder and his housemen have at times suffered greatly from scurvy, especially in the far north, and would be severely victimised but for special remedies that they use (the mottebeer, cranberry, &c., grown and preserved especially for the purpose). The Laplanders make a broth of scurvy-grass and similar herbs; I have watched them gathering these, and observed that the wild celery was a leading ingredient.

Scurvy on board ship results from eating salt meat, the potash of which has escaped by exosmosis into the brine or pickle. The sailor now escapes it by drinking citrate of potash in the form of lime-juice, and by alternating salt junk with rations of tinned meats.

I once lived for six days on bread and cheese only, tasting no other food. I had, in company with C. M. Clayton (son of the Senator of Delaware, who negotiated the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty), taken a passage from Malta to Athens in a little schooner, and expecting a three days’ journey we took no other rations than a lump of Cheshire cheese and a supply of bread. Bad weather doubled the expected length of our journey.

We were both young, and proud of our hardihood in bearing privations, were staunch disciples of Diogenes; but on the last day we succumbed, and bartered the remainder of our bread and cheese for some of the boiled horse-beans and cabbage-broth of the forecastle. The cheese, highly relished at first, had become positively nauseous, and our craving for the forecastle vegetable broth was absurd, considering the full view we had of its constituents and of the dirtiness of its cooks.

I attribute this to the lack of potash salts in the cheese and bread. It was similar to the craving for common salt by cattle that lack necessary chlorides in their food. I am satisfied that cheese can never take the place in an economic dietary, otherwise justified by its nutritious composition, unless this deficiency of potash is somehow supplied. My device of using it with milk as a solvent supplies it in a simple and natural manner.

The milk is not necessary, though preferable. I find that a solution of cheese may be made in water by simply grating or thinly slicing the cheese, and adding it to about its own bulk of water in which the bicarbonate of potash is dissolved.

The proportion of bicarbonate, which I theoretically estimate as demanded for supplying the deficiency of potash, is at the rate of about a quarter of an ounce to the pound of cheese; and I find that it will bear this quantity without the flavour of the potash being detected. The proportion of potash in cows’ milk is more than double the quantity thus supplied, but I assume that the cheese loses about half of its original supply, and base this assumption on the fact that ordinary cheese contains an average of about 4 per cent. of saline matter, while the proportion of saline matter to the casein and fat of the milk amounts to 5 per cent. This is a rough practical estimate, kept rather below the actual quantity demanded; therefore more than the quarter ounce may be used with impunity. I have doubled it in some of my experiments, and thus have just detected the bitter flavour of the salt.

As regards the solubility of the cheese, I should add that there are great differences in different samples. Generally speaking, the newer and milder the cheese the more soluble. Some that I have tried leave a stubbornly insoluble residuum, which is detestably tough. I found the same cheese to be unusually indigestible when eaten with bread in the ordinary raw state, and have reason to believe that it is what I have called ‘bosch cheese,’ to be described presently.

The successful solution, in either alkalised milk or alkalised water, cools into a custard-like mass, the thickness or viscosity varying, of course, with the quantity of solvent. It may be kept for use a short time (from two or three days to two or three weeks, according to the weather), after which it becomes putrescent.

As now well known to all concerned, a great deal of ‘butterine,’ or ‘oleomargarine,’ or ‘margarine,’ or ‘bosch,’ is made by extracting from the waste fat of oxen and sheep some of its harder constituents, the palmitic and stearic acids, then working up the softer remainder with a little milk, or even without the milk, into a resemblance to butter. When properly prepared and honestly sold for what it is, no fair grounds for objection exist; but it is too commonly sold for what it is not—i.e. as butter. For cookery purposes a fair sample of ‘bosch’ is quite as good as ‘inferior dosset.’ I have tasted some that is scarcely distinguishable from best Devonshire fresh.

More recently this enterprise has been further developed. Genuine butter is made from cream skimmed from the milk. The skimmed milk is then curdled, and to the whey thus precipitated a sufficient quantity of bosch is added to replace the butter that has been sent to market. A still more objectionable compound is made by using hogs’ lard as a substitute for the natural cream. These extraneous fats render the cheese more indigestible. The curd precipitated from skim-milk is harder and tougher than that thrown down from whole milk, and these added fats merely envelop the broken fragments of this. Hence my suspicion that the cheese leaving the above-described insoluble residuum was a sample of ‘bosch’ cheese.

Since the above was written I have met with the following in the Times, bringing the subject up to latest date, and I take the liberty of reprinting the larger part of this interesting and clearly-written communication:

My first acquaintance with the rational cookery of cheese was in the autumn of 1842, when I dined with the monks of St. Bernard. Being the only guest, I was the first to be supplied with soup, and then came a dish of grated cheese. Being young and bashful, I was ashamed to display my ignorance by asking what I was to do with the cheese, but made a bold dash, nevertheless, and sprinkled some of it into my soup. I then learned that my guess was quite correct; the prior and the monks did the same.

On walking on to Italy I learned that there such use of cheese is universal. Minestra without Parmesan would in Italy be regarded as we in England should regard muffins and crumpets without butter. During the forty years that have elapsed since my first sojourn in Italy, my sympathies are continually lacerated when I contemplate the melancholy spectacle of human beings eating thin soup without any grated cheese.

Not only in soups, but in many other dishes, it is similarly used. As an example, I may name ‘Risotto À la Milanese,’ a delicious, wholesome, and economical dish—a sort of stew composed of rice and the giblets of fowls, usually charged about twopence to threepence per portion at Italian restaurants. This, I suppose, is the reason why I find no recipe for it in the ‘high-class’ cookery-books. It is always served with grated Parmesan. The same with the many varieties of paste, of which macaroni and vermicelli are the best known in this country.

In all these the cheese is sprinkled over, and then stirred into the soup, &c., while it is hot. The cheese being finely divided is fused at once, and thus delicately cooked. This is quite different from the ‘macaroni cheese’ commonly prepared in England by depositing macaroni in a pie-dish, then covering it with a stratum of grated cheese, and placing this in an oven or before a fire until the cheese is desiccated, browned, and converted into a horny, caseous form of carbon that would induce chronic dyspepsia in the stomach of a wild boar if he fed upon it for a week.

In all preparations of Italian pastes, risottos, purÉes, &c., the cheese is intimately mixed throughout, and softened and diffused thereby in the manner above described.

The Italians themselves imagine that only their own Parmesan cheese is fit for this purpose, and have infected many Englishmen with the same idea. Thus it happens that fancy prices are paid in this country for that particular cheese, which nearly resembles the cheese known in our midland counties as ‘skim dick’—sold there at about fourpence per pound, or given by the farmers to their labourers. It is cheese ‘that has sent its butter to market,’ being made from the skim-milk which remains in the dairy after the pigs have been fully supplied.

I have used this kind of cheese as a substitute for Parmesan, and I find it answers the purpose, though it has not the fine flavour of the best qualities of Parmesan. The only fault of our ordinary whole-milk English and American cheeses is that they are too rich, and cannot be so finely grated on account of their more unctuous structure, due to the cream they contain.

I note that in the recipes of high-class cookery-books, where Parmesan is prescribed, cream is commonly added. Sensible English cooks, who use Cheshire, Cheddar, or good American cheese, are practically including the Parmesan and the cream in natural combination. By allowing these cheeses to dry, or by setting aside the outer part of the cheese for the purpose, the difficulty of grating is overcome.

I have now to communicate another result of my cheese-cooking researches, viz. a new dish—cheese-porridge—or, I may say, a new class of dishes—cheese-porridges. They are not intended for epicures, who only live to eat, but for men and women who eat in order to live and work. These combinations of cheese are more especially fitted for those whose work is muscular, and who work in the open air. Sedentary brain-workers should use them carefully, lest they suffer from over-nutrition, which is but a few degrees worse than partial starvation.

My typical cheese-porridge is ordinary oatmeal-porridge made in the usual manner, but to which grated cheese, or some of the cheese solution above described, is added, either while in the cookery-pot or after it is taken out, and yet as hot as possible. It should be sprinkled gradually and well stirred in.

Another kind of cheese-porridge or cheese-pudding is made by adding cheese to baked potatoes—the potatoes to be taken out of their skins and well mashed while the grated cheese is sprinkled and intermingled. A little milk may or may not be added, according to taste and convenience. This is better suited for those whose occupations are sedentary, potatoes being less nutritious and more easily digested than oatmeal. They are chiefly composed of starch, which is a heat-giver or fattener, while the cheese is highly nitrogenous, and supplies the elements in which the potato is deficient, the two together forming a fair approach to the theoretically demanded balance of constituents.

I say baked potatoes rather than boiled, and perhaps should explain my reasons, though in doing so I anticipate what I shall explain more fully when on the subject of vegetable food.

Raw potatoes contain potash salts which are easily soluble in water. I find that when the potato is boiled some of the potash comes out into the water, and thus the vegetable is robbed of a very valuable constituent. The baked potato contains all its original saline constituents which, as I have already stated, are specially demanded as an addition to cheese-food.

Hasty pudding made, as usual, of wheat flour, may be converted from an insipid to a savoury and highly nutritious porridge by the addition of cheese in like manner.

The same with boiled rice, whether whole or ground, also sago, tapioca, and other forms of edible starch. Supposing whole rice is used—and I think this is the best—the cheese may be sprinkled among the grains of rice and well stirred or mashed up with them. The addition of a little brown gravy to this, with or without chicken giblets, gives us an Italian risotto. The Indian-corn stirabout of the poor Irish cottier would be much improved both in flavour and nutritive value by the addition of a little grated cheese.

Pease pudding is not improved by cheese. The chemistry of this will come out when I explain the composition of peas, beans, &c. The same applies to pea soup.

I might enumerate other methods of cooking cheese by thus adding it in a finely-divided state to other kinds of food, but if I were to express my own convictions on the subject I should stir up prejudice by naming some mixtures which many people would denounce. As an example I may refer to a dish which I invented more than twenty years ago—viz. fish and cheese pudding, made by taking the remains from a dish of boiled codfish, haddock, or other white fish, mashing it with bread-crumbs, grated cheese, and ketchup, then warming in an oven and serving after the usual manner of scalloped fish. Any remains of oyster sauce may be advantageously included.

I find this delicious, but others may not. I frequently add grated cheese to boiled fish as ordinarily served, and have lately made a fish sauce by dissolving grated cheese in milk with the aid of a little bicarbonate of potash, and adding this to ordinary melted butter. I suggest these cheese mixtures to others with some misgivings as regards palatability, after learning the revelations of Darwin on the persistence of heredity. It is quite possible that, being a compound of the Swiss Mattieu with the Welsh Williams (cheese on both sides), I may inherit an abnormal fondness for this staple food of the mountaineers.

Be this as it may, so far as the mere palate is concerned; but in the chemistry of all my advocacy of cheese and its cookery I have full confidence. Rendered digestible by simple and suitable cookery, and added with a little potash salt to farinaceous food of all kinds, it affords exactly what is required to supply a theoretically complete and a most economical dietary, without the aid of any other kind of animal food. The potash salts may be advantageously supplied by a liberal second course of fruit or salad.

One more of my heretical applications of grated cheese must be specified. It is that of sprinkling it freely over ordinary stewed tripe, which thus becomes extraordinary stewed tripe. Or a solution of cheese may be mixed with liquor of the stew. It may not be generally known that stewed tripe is the most easily digestible of all solid animal food. This was shown by the experiments of Dr. Beaumont on his patient, Alexis St. Martin, who was so obliging (from a scientific point of view) as to discharge a gun in such a manner that it shot away the front of his own stomach and left there, after the healing of the wound, a valved window through which, with the aid of a simple optical contrivance, the work of digestion could be watched. Dr. Beaumont found that while beef and mutton required three hours for digestion, tripe was digested in one hour.[14]

I add by way of postscript a recipe for a dish lately invented by my wife. It is vegetable marrow au gratin, prepared by simply boiling the vegetable as usual, slicing it, placing the slices in a dish, covering them with grated cheese, and then browning slightly in an oven or before the fire, as in preparing the well-known ‘cauliflower au gratin.’ I have modified this (with improvement, I believe) by mashing the boiled marrow and stirring the grated cheese into the midst of it whilst as hot as possible; or, better still, by adding a little of the solution of cheese above described to the purÉe of mashed marrow and stirring it well in while hot. To please the ladies, and make it look pretty on the table, a little more grated cheese may be sprinkled on the top of this and browned in the oven or with a salamander. People with weak digestive powers should set aside the pretty.

Turnips may be similarly treated as ‘mashed turnips au gratin.’ I recommend this especially to my vegetarian friends, who have no objection to cheese, but do not properly appreciate it.

Taking as I do great interest in their efforts, regarding them as pioneers of a great and certainly approaching reform, I have frequently dined at their restaurants (always do so when within reach, as I am only a flesh-eater for convenience’ sake), and by the experience thus afforded of their cookery, am convinced that they are losing many converts by the lack of cheese in many of their most important dishes.