Primitive man made use of anything near his hand to satisfy his need and accidents and extreme hunger made many foods appetizing to our ancestors which might not appeal to us today if we had not inherited the taste for them.

According to W. Mattieu Williams, "the fact that we use the digestive and nutrient apparatus of sheep, oxen, etc., for the preparation of our food is merely a transitory barbarism." Other authorities agree with him that the art of cooking may some time be so developed as to enable us to prepare the coarser vegetable substances in an easily assimilated form without depending upon animals as middlemen.

The art of the cook has done much to make unlikely food materials attractive, but there is another phase of the question, and that is the problem how to make what we know is nourishing both pleasant and attractive. The cook of the past had to make the best possible use of the meager nutrients at hand. The cook of the present and future has the harvests of the whole world within reach all the year around. How shall such abundant material be combined to satisfy the palate without overloading the digestive organs ?

More important still, how shall we select and prepare foods that they may produce sufficient energy in the human body for the great tasks awaiting it in our complex civilization.

The Art of Cooking

During the last twenty years or less much material has been published by the U. S. Department of Agriculture recording the results of investigations. Many of these pamphlets can be secured for the asking.

For practical use all the principal substances found in our foods may be classified under five heads: water, mineral matter, protein, fat, and carbohydrate. The first, and its importance in cooking, has already been considered. The second appears in different forms in all foods, rarely exceeding one per cent, of their natural weight. This it is which remains as ash when a food is burned. It is most prominent in the refuse portions of food which are removed before coming to the table, such as the husks and bones. Some of these mineral matters are readily soluble in water, hence are lost when no use is made of the water in which vegetables are boiled.

Common salt is the principal mineral substance in use in cooking.

The other three great classes of food substances are known as organic compounds, - the protein, fat, and carbohydrate.

The proteins are subdivided into many classes, but so far as practical cooking is concerned, little need be said of these here. Since this type of material constitutes about one-fifth of the human body by weight it must be found in the daily food. Lean meat, eggs, milk curd, and portions of grains and seeds are the principal sources of this class of food. As a whole, protein of vegetable origin is more slowly and less perfectly absorbed than animal protein. The principal duty of nitrogenous foods is to build up the body and to keep it in repair.

♦Following the nomenclature of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, the term protein is used to denote all classes of nitrogenous foods.

Classification of Food

Organic Foods

Fats are obtained from both animal and vegetable sources and for the convenience of the cook are commonly separated by heat or pressure. Considerable fat is stored as a reserve fund in the normal human body. Its principal office is that of fuel to keep the body's machinery going.

Carbohydrates are chiefly of vegetable origin and include starch and sugar. They are not apparent to any extent in the body but are important fuel foods, though more than two pounds of starch or sugar would be required to produce as much energy or bodily heat as one pound of fat.

The provider of food, the cook, and the consumer all should be familiar with the composition of common foods in order that the daily meals may be adapted not only to purse and palate but to climate and the condition of individual bodies.

Fats

Carbohydrates