Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 September 1884 — Hygienic Soups. [ARTICLE]

Hygienic Soups.

Before leaving the subject of peas, I must here repeat a practical suggestion that I published in the Birmingham Journal about twenty years ago—viz., that the water in which green peas are boiled should not be thrown away. It contains much of the saline constituents of the peas, some' soluble casein, and has a fine flavor, the very essence of the pea. If' to this, as it comes from the saucepan, be added a little stock or some Liebig’s extract, a delicious soup is at once produced, requiring nothing more than ordinary seasoning. With •care, it may form a clear soup such as just now is in fashion among the fastidious; but, prepared, however roughly, it is a very economical, wholesome, and appetizing soup, and costs a minimum of trouble. I must here add a few words in advocacy of the further adoption in this country of the French practice of using, as potage, thewater in which vegetables generally (excepting potatoes) have been boiled. When, we boil cabbage, turnips, carrots, etc., we dissolve out of them a very large proportion of their saline constituents- salts which are absolutely necessary for the maintenance of health, salts without which we become victims of gout, rheumatism, lumbago, neuralgia, gravel, and all the ills that huiMn flesh, with a lithic acid diathesis, is heir to, i e., about the most painful series of all its inheritances. The potash of the salts existing therein, in combination with organic acids, is separated from those acids by organic combustion, and is then and there presented to the baneful lithic acid of the blood and tissues, the stony tortureparticles of which it converts into soluble lithate of potash, and thus enables them to be carried out of the system.—W. Mattieu Williams, in Popular Science Monthly.