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Page 24
Now, because tea, coffee, and cocoa approach so nearly in value as
nutriment to beef and lentils, we must not be misled. Fourteen ounces of
tea are equivalent to half a pound of meat; but a repast of dry tea not
being very usual, in fact, being out of the question altogether, it
becomes plain, that the principal value of these foods, used as we must
use them, in very small quantities, is in the warmth and comfort they
give. Also, these weights (except the bread) are of uncooked food. Eight
ounces of meat would, if boiled or roasted, dwindle to five or six, while
the ten ounces of lentils or beans would swell to twice the capacity of
any ordinary stomach. So, ten pounds of potatoes are required to give you
the actual benefit contained in the few ounces of meat; and only the
Irishman fresh from his native cabin can calmly consider a meal of that
magnitude, while, as to carrots, neither Irishman nor German, nor the most
determined and enterprising American, could for a moment face the
spectacle of fifteen pounds served up for his noonday meal.
The inference is plain. Union is strength, here as elsewhere; and the
perfect meal must include as many of these elements as will make it not
too bulky, yet borrowing flavor and substance wherever necessary.
As a rule, the food best adapted to climate and constitution seems to have
been instinctively decided upon by many nations; and a study of national
dishes, and their adaptation to national needs, is curious and
interesting. The Esquimaux or Greenlander finds his most desirable meal in
a lump of raw blubber, the most condensed form of carbonaceous food being
required to preserve life. It is not a perverted taste, but the highest
instinct; for in that cruel cold the body must furnish the food on which
the keen air draws, and the lamp of life there has a very literal supply.
Take now the other extreme of temperature,--the East Indies, China,
Africa, and part even of the West Indies and America,--and you find rice
the universal food. There is very little call, as you may judge, for
heat-producers, but rather for flesh-formers; and starch and sugar both
fulfill this end, the rice being chiefly starch, which turns into sugar
under the action of the saliva. Add a little melted butter, the East
Indian _ghee_, or olive-oil used in the West Indies instead, and we have
all the elements necessary for life under those conditions.
A few degrees northward, and the same rice is mingled with bits of fish
or meat, as in the Turkish _pilau_, a dish of rice to which mutton or
poultry is added.
The wandering Arab finds in his few dates, and handful of parched wheat or
maize, the sugar and starch holding all the heat required, while his
draught of mare's or camel's milk, and his occasional _pilau_ of mutton,
give him the various elements which seem sufficient to make him the model
of endurance, blitheness, and muscular power. So the Turkish
burden-bearers who pick up a two-hundred-pound bag of coffee as one picks
up a pebble, use much the same diet, though adding melons and cucumbers,
which are eaten as we eat apples.
The noticeable point in the Italian dietary is the universal and profuse
use of macaroni. Chestnuts and Indian corn, the meal of which is made into
a dish called _polenta_, something like our mush, are also used, but
macaroni is found at every table, noble or peasant's. No form of wheat
presents such condensed nourishment, and it deserves larger space on our
own bills of fare than we have ever given it.
In Spain we find the _olla podrida_, a dish containing, as chief
ingredient, the _garbanzo_ or field-pea: it is a rich stew, of fowls or
bacon, red peppers, and pease. Red pepper enters into most of the dishes
in torrid climates, and there is a good and sufficient reason for this
apparent mistake. Intense and long-continued heat weakens the action of
the liver, and thus lessens the supply of bile; and red pepper has the
power of stimulating the liver, and so assisting digestion. East Indian
curries, and the Mexican and Spanish _olla_, are therefore founded on
common-sense.
In France the _pot-au-feu_, or soup-pot, simmers in every peasant or
middle-class home, and is not to be despised even in richer ones. In this
dish, a small portion of meat is cooked so judiciously as to flavor a
large mass of vegetables and broth; and this, served with salad and oil
and bread, forms a meal which can hardly be surpassed in its power of
making the most of every constituent offered. In Germany soups are a
national dish also; but their extreme fondness for pork, especially raw
ham and sausage, is the source of many diseases. Sweden, Norway,
Russia,--all the far northern countries,--tend more and more to the oily
diet of the Esquimaux, fish being a large part of it. There is no room for
other illustrations; but, as you learn the properties of food, you will be
able to read national dietaries, from the Jewish down, with a new
understanding of what power food had and has in forming national
peculiarities.
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