Science in the Kitchen A Scientific Treatise On Food Substances and Their Dietetic Properties, Together with a Practical Explanation of the Principles of Healthful Cookery, and a Large Number of Original, Palatable, and Wholesome Recipes

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SCIENCE IN THE KITCHEN.

A Scientific Treatise on Food Substances and Their Dietetic Properties,
together with a Practical Explanation of the Principles of Healthful
Cookery, and a Large Number of Original, Palatable, and Wholesome Recipes.

by

MRS. E. E. KELLOGG, A.M.

Superintendent of the Sanitarium School of Cookery and of the Bay View
Assembly School of Cookery, and Chairman of the World's Fair Committee
on Food Supplies, for Michigan

1893







PREFACE.

The interest in scientific cookery, particularly in cookery as related
to health, has manifestly increased in this country within the last
decade as is evidenced by the success which has attended every
intelligent effort for the establishment of schools for instruction in
cookery in various parts of the United States. While those in charge of
these schools have presented to their pupils excellent opportunities for
the acquirement of dexterity in the preparation of toothsome and
tempting viands, but little attention has been paid to the science of
dietetics, or what might be termed the hygiene of cookery.

A little less than ten years ago the Sanitarium at Battle Creek Mich.,
established an experimental kitchen and a school of cookery under the
supervision of Mrs. Dr. Kellogg, since which time, researches in the
various lines of cookery and dietetics have been in constant progress in
the experimental kitchen, and regular sessions of the school of cookery
have been held. The school has gradually gained in popularity, and the
demand for instruction has become so great that classes are in session
during almost the entire year.

During this time, Mrs. Kellogg has had constant oversight of the cuisine
of both the Sanitarium and the Sanitarium Hospital, preparing bills of
fare for the general and diet tables, and supplying constantly new
methods and original recipes to meet the changing and growing demands of
an institution numbering always from 500 to 700 inmates.

These large opportunities for observation, research, and experience,
have gradually developed a system of cookery, the leading features of
which are so entirely novel and so much in advance of the methods
heretofore in use, that it may be justly styled, _A New System of
Cookery_. It is a singular and lamentable fact, the evil consequences of
which are wide-spread, that the preparation of food, although involving
both chemical and physical processes, has been less advanced by the
results of modern researches and discoveries in chemistry and physics,
than any other department of human industry. Iron mining, glass-making,
even the homely art of brick-making, and many of the operations of the
farm and the dairy, have been advantageously modified by the results of
the fruitful labors of modern scientific investigators. But the art of
cookery is at least a century behind in the march of scientific
progress. The mistress of the kitchen is still groping her way amid the
uncertainties of mediæval methods, and daily bemoaning the sad results
of the "rule of thumb." The chemistry of cookery is as little known to
the average housewife as were the results of modern chemistry to the old
alchemists; and the attempt to make wholesome, palatable, and
nourishing food by the methods commonly employed, is rarely more
successful than that of those misguided alchemists in transmuting lead
and copper into silver and gold.

The new cookery brings order from out the confusion of mixtures and
messes, often incongruence and incompatible, which surrounds the average
cook, by the elucidation of the principles which govern the operations
of the kitchen, with the same certainty with which the law of gravity
rules the planets.

Those who have made themselves familiar with Mrs. Kellogg's system of
cookery, invariably express themselves as trebly astonished: first, at
the simplicity of the methods employed; secondly, at the marvelous
results both as regards palatableness, wholesomeness, and
attractiveness; thirdly, that it had never occurred to them "to do this
way before."

This system does not consist simply of a rehash of what is found in
every cook book, but of new methods, which are the result of the
application of the scientific principles of chemistry and physics to the
preparation of food in such a manner as to make it the most nourishing,
the most digestible, and the most inviting to the eye and to the palate.

Those who have tested the results of Mrs.