Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1910-07-24
Air-Shrunk Foods, Fresh in Winter
Continued from pag
Continued from pags 10

which give to such products their delicious
havors This irremediable loss is avoided
under the new system, the moisture being
merely sucked out of the material, while the
others and essential oils remain. No chemi-
cal change of any kind takes place in the
fruits and vegetables, and consequently, If
eaten raw, they have no cooked" taste.
The raspberries, for instance, taste exactly
like fresh raspberries.
Would it pay the housewife to dry her
own vegetables? Surely it would, and very
handsomely. Such products when home
canned COST on an average, only about halt
as much as the corresponding commercial
articles, and are usually superior to the lat
ter in quality. But in this case the house
wife would have no glass jars, or other such
receptacles, to buy, and She could bide her
time in purchasing the raw material, buying
it whenever she found it cheapest. Suppos-
ing that she were provided with some sort of
apparatus for the purpose, presumably SIM
pie and inexpensive, almost no labor would
be involved.
To be able to preserve fresh vegetables in
this way would be most valuable oppor-
tunity for the farmers wife, inasnuch as her
supplies could be obtained from the kitchen
garden. Thus she could have such luxuries
on her table all the year around, at practi-
cally no expense. Packed in suitable recep-
tacles, they would occupy very little room,
the material being reduced to astonishingly
small bulk by the drying process. Being de-
prived of all its water, it has the additional
advantage of weighing almost nothing, so as
to be easily handled.
Housewives since prehistoric times have
been obliged to tackle the problem of pre-
serving foods. Thus the women of the an
cient caverns dried certain seeds and fruits,
the object in view, though they did not know
it, being to make them sterile that is to
say proof against attack by bacteria and the
microscopic fungi called "yeasts" and
"molds." The fungi and bacteria, like the
higher plants, are unable to live and multi
ply without moisture Hence it is that the
preservation of otherwise perishable food
materials is accomplished by drying.
We dry fish and beef, and the Chinese dry
oysters, which are marketed in this condi-
ton on large scale. Dried milk is at pres
ent an important product in our own coun-
try-requiring only the addition of boiling
water to render it available for use. Many
thousands of pounds of dried eggs were
purchased by the Navy Department for the
cruise of the Battle Fleet around the world
and the officers and men found them exceed
ingly palatable, tasting exactly like the
fresh article when prepared in certain ways.
Every housewife buys beans and rice, as we'll
as peas, in dry state; and these are declared
by the experts of the Department of Agri-
culture to be the most economical of all
foods containing as they do S8 per cent.
of solid nutriment.
Drying is Natures method of preserving,
and there is none quite so effective or SO sat
isfactory. Hence the value of the newly
discovered process for desiccating vegetables
and fruits-which, by the way, when COM