Science in the Kitchen

by Mrs. E.E. Kellogg

Table Topics

"Let appetite wear reason's golden chain,
and find in due restrain its luxury."

A man's food, when he has the means and 
opportunity of selecting it, suggests his 
moral nature. Many a Christian is trying 
to do by prayer that which cannot be done 
except through corrected diet.  
                                   —Talmage.

Our pious ancestors enacted a law that 
suicides should be buried where four roads meet, 
and that a cart-load of stones should be thrown 
upon the body. Yet, when gentlemen or ladies 
commit suicide, not by cord or steel, but by 
turtle soup or lobster salad, they may be buried
 on consecrated ground, and the public are not 
 ashamed to read an epitaph upon their tombstones
  false enough to make the marble blush.     
                                   —Horace Mann.

It is related by a gentleman who had an appointment 
to breakfast with the late A.T. Stewart, that the
 butler placed before them both an elaborate bill of 
 fare; the visitor selected a list of rare dishes, 
 and was quite abashed when Mr. Stewart said, 
 "Bring me my usual breakfast,—oatmeal and boiled eggs." 
 He then explained to his friend that he found simple 
 food a necessity to him, otherwise he could not think 
 clearly. That unobscured brain applied to nobler ends 
 would have won higher results, but the principle remains 
 the same.              
                                   —Sel.
 

Study simplicity in the number of dishes, and a variety 
in the character of the meals.          
                                   —Sel.

I have come to the conclusion that more than half the disease 
which embitters life is due to avoidable errors in diet, ... 
and that more mischief, in the form of actual disease, of 
impaired vigor, and of shortened life, accrues to civilized 
man from erroneous habits of eating than from the habitual 
use of alcoholic drink, considerable as I know that evil to be.
                        —Sir Henry Thompson.
                                

The ancient Gauls, who were a very brave, strong, and 
hearty race, lived very abstemiously. Their food was 
milk, berries, and herbs. They made bread of nuts. 
They had a very peculiar fashion of wearing a metal 
ring around the body, the size of which was regulated 
by act of Parliament. Any man who outgrew in 
circumference his metal ring was looked upon as a 
lazy glutton, and consequently was disgraced.

To keep in health this rule is wise:
Eat only when you need, and relish food,
chew thoroughly that it may do you good,
have it well cooked, unspiced, and undisguised.
                     —Leonardo da Vinci.
                     

Now good digestion waits on appetite, and health on both
                                     —Shakespeare.

We live not upon what we eat, but upon what we digest.
                                      —Abernethy.

If we consider the amount of ill temper, despondency, 
and general unhappiness which arises from want of 
proper digestion and assimilation of our food, it seems 
obviously well worth while to put forth every effort, and 
undergo any sacrifice, for the purpose of avoiding indigestion, 
with its resulting bodily ills; and yet year after year, from 
the cradle to the grave, we go on violating the plainest and 
simplest laws of health at the temptation of Cooks, caterers, 
and confectioners, whose share in shortening the average 
term of human life is probably nearly equal to that of the 
combined armies and navies of the world.
                                  —Richardson.

Almost every human malady is connected, 
either by highway or byway, with the stomach.
                                  —Sir Francis Head.

It is a well-established fact that a leg of mutton 
caused a revolution in the affairs of Europe. 
Just before the battle of Leipsic, Napoleon the 
Great insisted on dining on boiled mutton, 
although his physicians warned him that it would 
disagree with him. The emperor's brain resented 
the liberty taken with its colleague, the stomach; 
the monarch's equilibrium was overturned, the 
battle lost, and a new page opened in history.
                              --Sel.

Cattle know when to go home from grazing, 
but a foolish man never knows his stomachs measures.
                               --Scandinavian Proverb.

The kitchen (that is, your stomach) being out of order, 
the garret (the head) cannot be right, and every room 
in the house becomes affected. Remedy the evil in the 
kitchen, and all will be right in parlor and chamber. 
If you put improper food into the stomach, you play the 
mischief with it, and with the whole machine besides.
                                          --Abernathy.

One fourth of what we eat keeps us, and the other three 
fourths we keep at the peril of our lives.
                                          —Abernethy.