Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 December 1884 — Count Rumford’s Dietetics. [ARTICLE]

Count Rumford’s Dietetics.

In the formula for Rumford’s soup given in my last, it is stated that the bread should not be cooked, but added just before serving the soup. Like everything else «n his practical programmes, this was prescribed with 4 philosophical reason. His reasoning may have been fanciful sometimes, bul he never acted stupidly, as the vulai majority of mankind usually do, whei they blindly follow an established cus tom without knowing any reason for so doing, or even attempting to discover 1 a reason. In his essay on “The Pleasure of Eating and of the Means That May Be Employed for Increasing It,” he says: “The pleasure enjoyed in eating depends—first, on the agreeableness of the taste of the food; and, secondly, upon its power to affect the palate.. Now, there are many substances extremely cheap, by which very agreeable tastes may be given to food, particularly when the basis or nutritive substance of the food is tasteless; and th& effect of any kind of palatalble solid food (of meat, for instance), upon the organs of taste, may be increased almost indefinitely, by reducing the size of the particles of such food, and causing it to act upon the palate by a lai’ger surface. And if means be used to prevent its being swallowed too soon,

which may easily be done by mixing it with some hard and tasteless substance, such as crumbs of bread rendered hard by toasting, or anything else of that kind, by which a long mastication is rendered necessary, the enjoyment of eating may be greatly increased and prolonged.” He adds that “the idea of occupying a person a great while, and affording him much pleasure at the same time, in eating a small quantity of food, may perhaps appear ridiculous to some; hut those who consider the matter attentively will perceive that it is very important. It is, perhaps, as much so as anything that can employ the attention of the philosopher.”— W. Mattieu Williams, in Popular Science Monthly.