with the help of the chopping-knife and the herb bag we can make them still do proteid duty in our bodies.

Real import

If we do not overvalue either the gelatine or the ance of soup. flavoring matters in our meat soups, nor throw away the meat out of which they are made, we shall begin to make soups on the right basis, that is an understanding of the real value of the materials we are working with, and we shall use meat for our soups less often than we now do perhaps, considering its high price and our greater need of it cooked in other ways. Soups should not be regarded as a luxury, neither as the last resort of poverty, but as a necessary part of a dinner, just as they are now used by all classes in Europe; but they need not be made of good cuts of meat, nor indeed, of meat at all.

Proteid as we buy it.

We will now direct our attention to the proteid as we buy it.

We cannot here take up the chemical composition and exact nutritive value of every kind of meat to be bought at the butcher's stall, the fish market and the poultry stand. But we must note a few points of importance.

We know that butchers' meat contains from 50 per Butchers' meat. cent to 78 per cent of water, according to the quality of the piece and the kind of animal. Most people in buying meat think first of the red part; they may know that it is advantageous to buy meat that is streaked with fat, but they hardly realize how wise it is to do so As a rule fat takes the place of water. Let us consult tables of analyses for the amounts of water, proteids and nitrogenous extractives, fats and salts contained in lean pieces and in pieces streaked with fat. In Prof. König's valuable treatise on Foods we find such analyses, carefully collected and sifted out of a large amount of material; samples of neck, tenderloin, shoulder, hind-quarter and so on, just as bought at the butchers', were analyzed after being freed from adherent lump fat, and the average composition of all the different cuts was as follows:

Prof. König's analysis of

meat.

These tables illustrate how wise it is to buy meat from a very fat animal. They show that a pound of meat from a fat ox may have

more than 20 per cent less water than a corresponding piece from a lean one; of course such a piece may contain from 3 to 4 per cent less proteid, but to compensate for this, it will have 25 per cent more fat.

Let us give another table which illustrates that pieces like tenderloin are not the richest in proteids and fats, though they do have the finest flavor. It may help to console those whose purses do not

allow them to buy these expensive cuts.

In this case the difference between shoulder and tenderloin as to the amount of water contained in each is striking. In the case of medium fat and lean animals, poor and good pieces approach each other more nearly in composition.

We regret that the scope of this essay will not allow us to give drawings and full illustrations of the different parts of an animal, with advice in detail as to what to buy. We are glad to mention in this connection a former prize essay-"Healthy Homes and Foods for the Working Classes"-which gives much information needed by the housekeeper as to the qualities and comparative value of the meat from different animals, of milk and milk products. Of butchers' meat, beef must always be considered the most economical, its choice being governed by facts Fat mutton also ranks high.

Some meats compared.

just stated.

Pork.

Pork. Say what we may against pork, it is a most valuable kind of meat, especially for the poor man, and

the laws governing its slaughter and sale should be so stringent as to protect him. The great importance of salt pork and bacon we have considered under "Fats."

It is of little use to give rules about buying this meat; we must generally take what the butcher furnishes, but at least we can cook it well, never eating it raw even when well dried and smoked.

Fish.

Fish. From the standpoint of the economist, fish is worthy of especial mention; nature does the feeding, we have only to pay for the catching. In the season when it is best and cheapest, fresh fish should be used freely. We have only

to remind the housewife that she loses to of the weight of a fish in bones and head.

Salted and

Salted and smoked fish is of great importance as smoked fish. food, and not alone for people living on the sea-coast. Salted cod contains, according to König's tables, 30 per cent of Proteids, and this fact, together with its low price, fully justifies its popularity with all economical people.

Other salted and preserved fish, as for instance, the herring, give variety in the diet of many a poor family.

LIVER, HEART, ETC.

Internal organs. Of the internal organs of animals generally considered eatable, we really appreciate only the liver. The lungs, brains, kidneys, heart, and the stomach prepared as tripe, are good food and they are often sold very cheap in country towns. The head of most animals, as of the calf, is excellent for soups and other dishes, and in the country it is often given away.

Eggs compared

with meats as

EGGS.

To get an idea of the comparative value of eggs as a food. a food let us compare them with medium fat beef.

Medium fat beef has.. 72.5 per ct. 21. per ct.

Eggs have

74.5 66

12.5 66

Fat.

5.5 per ct.

12.

We see that while the water is nearly the same in both, the meat has the advantage in proteids and the eggs the advantage in fat, the fat moreover, being of very fine quality.

Take eggs at their cheapest, as in April when they often sell at 15 cents a dozen, that would be 12 cents a pound, 10 eggs of average size weighing a pound. They could then be considered cheaper than the highest priced cuts of meat, but still much dearer than the cheaper parts, flank, neck and brisket, at 8 cents. So that even at this low price, they are somewhat of a luxury to the man who must get his proteid and fat in their cheapest form.

And when we consider that only for a short time in the year is the price so low,-eggs being on an average quoted at 25 to 30 cents, the showing for them as a proteid rival of meat is poor indeed. Except in the spring the economically inclined must be sparing of their use even in dessert dishes. When housekeepers

say, as I have heard them, that eggs at 25 cents a dozen are cheaper than meat, they must be speaking in comparison with very high priced meats

CHEESE

In America, cheese is regarded more as a luxury Cheese (its food value.) than as a staple article of food, and yet 1 pound of cheese is equal in food value to more than 2 lbs. of meat, it being very rich in both fat and proteids. Considering this, its price is very low and it ought to be a treasure to the poor man and do good service in replacing sometimes the more expensive meats.

Use of cheese abroad.

Its food value is fully recognized abroad. For the Swiss peasant it is a staple second only to bread, while the use of it in Italy and in Germany is extensive. The writer once spent several weeks in the house of a large farmer on the slope of Mt Pilatus in Switzerland, and observed daily the food given to the harvesters; the luncheon sent twice a day to the fields consisted of a quarter section of the grayish skim cheese, accompanied with bread. I was told that the poor people in the region ate scarcely any meat, using cheese in its stead.

The writer has also observed the use of cheese in Germany. Every locality has its special variety of the soft kind made of sour milk, and great amounts of the Swiss, both skim and full milk, cheese are consumed. It is generally eaten uncooked, but also as an addition to cooked food in a great variety of dishes.

There is no doubt of the food value of cheese, but Digestibility of Cheese. there does seem to be some question as to its digestibility. When we come to inquire into this point, we find that thorough experiments have been made by German scientists; Dr. Rübner, a pupil of Voit, gives the result of experiments on himself. He found that he could not consume much of it alone, but with milk he took easily 200 grams, or nearly pound, and only when he took as high as 517 grams or over a pound daily, was it less completely digested than meat. Professor König says, that in the amounts in which it is generally eaten, 125 to 250 grams daily (to lbs.,) it is as well digested as meat or eggs. The extensive use of it abroad would seem to be some guarantee for the digestibility of the foreign varieties at least.

American cheeses have in general a sharper flavor than the foreign, still it is probable that well mixed with other food, enough could

be taken many a time, to give a man his needed daily quantity of animal proteid-between six and seven ounces-and this is a matter of great importance from an economical point of view.

METHODS OF COOKING MEAT.

Why cook.

And first-why do we cook it at all? In the animal as well as in the vegetable world some foods are all ready for our digestion, as milk. Raw eggs too, are perfectly digestible and are often given to invalids. We hear of "Raw meat cures," and it has been found that tender and juicy raw meat, if chopped fine to break the connective tissue, is well digested.

But raw meat does not taste good to most of us, while the delicious flavor and odor of a broiled steak make it very acceptable to the palate, and we must believe to the stomach also We bring out the flavor," as we say, by cooking; what else do we do? Let us examine for a moment a piece of meat with reference to the effect heat has upon it.

Structure of meat.

The red part is made up of, first, very tiny sausage-like bags, or muscle fibres as they are called, and in these is contained the precious proteid matter, flavors and salts all mixed together with water into a sort of jelly; second, these muscle fibres are bound together by strands of connective tissue, as that white stringy mass is called, in which the fat and blood vessels are lodged; this is also of food value, but inferior to the fibres. Third, dissolved in the juices floating between the fibres and strands, there is also a proteid called soluble albumen. The little bags of proteid, when we can get at them, are as digestible in our stomachs as is the white of egg, though, like the egg again, their flavor is improved by slight cooking. But as we have seen, they are imprisoned in the connective tissue, somewhat, we may say, as are the starch grains of the potato in the cellulose.

Softening con

This connective tissue we can soften by heat, thereby nective tissue. turning it into a sort of gelatine, but unfortunately, unless the meat is very tender, this requires a longer application of heat than is needed to cook the delicate albumen all full of flavors