Forest City press. (Forest City, Potter County, D.T. [S.D.]) 1883-19??, 1907-12-19

The sins of the American cook-sins
10Th of omission n commission
worry DIR. Harvey w. Wiley. chief Of
the bureau OF chemistry in the United
States department of agriculture. And
DR.. Wiley. father of the pure food
law" one-time president of the New
York Hundred Year club for the study
Of longevity, is on the warpath again.
His w%arpath. be 1t observed, always
leads in the same direction. Always
he is fighting in behalf Of mankind's-
especially American mankind's-long-
suffering stomach. perhaps with the
ultimate design of making the whole
nation one big Hundred Year club.
Having. after years Of strenuous eff
fort, and in face of all sorts of oppOsi-
ton. won a pure ood a approximate
ly after his own heart, he Is still fight
ing the good fight along h same lines.
Having bestowed upon a more or less
grateful AUTOMATICALLY and theoreti-
cally, at least-the blessing of pure
food, he is now imploring its people to
pay more attention to the preparation
of II.
While in Paris recently DIR. Wiley is
said to have remarked that French
cooking was infinitely superior to
American; in fact. that the domestic
economy of these United States looked
like the %proverbial three dimes as COM
pared with that of the French republic.
Questioned upon his return from abroad
as to whether he was really RESPONSE
BILE for any such heresies. DIR. Wiley
promptly pleaded guilty.
Yes. l did say it-and / meant it,
too: not the 80 cents exactly, but to
that general effect.
american cookery-why. there Is no
American cookery! There Is New Eng
of which is hot breads and pie" and
the good doctors tone of disgust vas
worth going miles to hear.
There is southern cookery, whose
cherished specialties are fried chicken
and johnny cake. There are all sorts
of local schools of cookery, but as for
a national school-there is none"
You mean that France has a ma
tional school Of cookery"
Practically. yes; though, to be sure,
the French are not above learning from
n one else Who can teach them any
thing. But there are certain things
that you always find good-cooked in
ever France. And the foremost Of these
Is bread-just bread.
The greatest sin of American cook
ing IL its hot breads-particularly its
baking powder breads. There Is MOTH
ing harder on the much abused ma
tional stomach than its hot bread
habit.
Such breads are cooked only fifteen
or twenty minutes-that means guam
ties OF half raw starch taken into the
system. Ask any physician what that
means.
Il would like to eliminate all bak-
ing powder breads from the national
menu. None of them is long enough in
the oven for the f-iour-whether It be
wheat, or rye, or corn, or what not
to be properly cooked. to have UNDER
gone the chemical changes that II
should have undergone before it is At
for the human stomach.
"Yeastbreads are not 80 bad. In the
drst place, they are baked more thor
oughly. Aside from the baking, the
baking powder breads naturally con-
tain a mineral residuum from the pow
der. which is never particularly good
for our internal mechanism. while the
yeast disintegrates chiefly into alcohol
and carbon dioxide. The one passes
on svaporates. 10 lost: the other pufs