Soups as Food.

Otago Witness, Issue 2565, 13 May 1903, Page 64

Sou ps as Food.

Professor Alain M'Fayden, in his lecture on digestion at the Royal Institution the other day, said that soup is a stimulant, but is not a food 1 . It gives a fillip to the system, but no nourishment, for the good reason that the latter has been left behind in the meat. Tho clearer the broth the further it is removed from a real food. Beef-teas are levoid of nourisliment. A great London doctor used to say years ago that beef tea had sent to their grave 6 hundreds of invalids who lived upon it and fancied it fed them. In the matter of meat soups only the Frenchman and the Scotsmen are in the right. Drink your bouillon or your mutton broth first, %s & stimulant, but mind you eat the boiled beef afterwards, or you will rise up to work unfed. The professor, mi further explanatione, said there was no more absurd fallacy than to suppose that the "bouilli" and the chicken which the French cook has boiled up in the "petite marmite" are valueJess as food after the soup has been strained off because they are somewhat insipid. On the contrary, all their goodness is still left in them. A.s regards bones when boiled, these give out gelatinous substances which are highly nourishing. Always, therefore, order your plate of ox-tail thick, not clear, the so-called clarifying of this soup being; nothing more nor lew than the careful removing of all its nutritive properties. Mock turtle, again, is sustaining, because of the gelatinous products from meat which it contains, or ought to xmtaim. Genuine vegetable soups, that is to say. those in which the vegetables have been allowed to remain, are more nourishing than most meat soups. Professor M'Fadycn was inclined to place lentil eoun at the head of all the list, A ,hcso made from peas and beans following very clcee. The professor praise the iwe of cheese in such soups, and waxed quit© enthusiastic over the Italian's invariable custom of sprinkling his minestra with Permeean. Than cheese, said the professor, there is no finer food in the world, and *n its grated form it reaches perfection, combining then the highest nutritive powers with '.he duality of being in the greatest degree assimilable. — Daily Telegraph.