LEGUMINOUS VEGETABLES.
The greens which we put in soup cannot be considered nutriment, but
rather a kind of spice, and perhaps also as a means of giving us the
benefit of some medicinal qualities which they in part contain. We will
dwell no longer on this subject, but proceed to the most nutritive
articles of food we use, viz., the leguminous vegetables.
Pease, beans, and lentils are so extremely rich in fat and
muscle-forming elements, that in this regard they excel bread and are
almost on a level with meat. No wonder, therefore, that they are very
favorite articles if well cooked, when we consider the fact that they
are so very cheap. Where people are too poor to buy meat every day,
legumes must not be found wanting. They play a great part in barracks
and prisons; and in order to keep pace with the immense progress
gastronomical science has made, one of the above-named articles ought to
be used in those establishments on all days on which there is no meat.
The element common to all three is called legumine. It is richer in
starch than bread and contains nearly three times more of it than the
potato. Partly legumes contain also ready-made sugar; this may be tasted
in green pease. Besides this, their flesh-forming parts are in greater
quantity than those of other plants, while their quantity of water is
less, and it is therefore not advisable to take them dry. New pease and
beans have, moreover, the advantage of being eatable together with their
hulls and pods, as these, when yet green, contain likewise sugar and
starch.
But we must recommend, above all, not to eat the hulls of dried legumes.
This may be avoided if, when boiled, the cook crushes them and strains
them through a coarse sieve, by which process the hulls are left. If
this is not done, we run the danger of disturbing the functions of the
body, inasmuch as these dry hulls are dissolved neither by the saliva of
the mouth nor the gastric juice of the stomach.
Most every one that once in his life had culinary labor to perform, is
acquainted with the fact that the cooking of legumes is often
accompanied by a peculiar circumstance. Pease sometimes may boil by the
hour without getting soft; it happens even that young pease, soft by
nature, become harder and harder by boiling; while, at other times, the
same pease have become soft and burst open after but half an hour's
cooking. The reason of this lies not in the pease, but in the water they
are boiled in. Our housewives undoubtedly know, from the experience of
their wash-days, that there is hard water and soft. Soap, when put in
hard water, breaks into small pieces, while it dissolves in soft water
completely and forms a slimy liquid. Science has solved this mystery:
spring-water contains lime, which combines chemically with the fat in
soap and forms with it an insoluble element; while rain-water contains
little or no lime, and therefore dissolves soap. The same is the case in
regard to the legumine. The lime in spring-water, which settles on the
bottom of vessels as sediment, combines with some constituent parts of
the pea and forms a very hard, indigestible body; rain-water, however,
dissolves legumine completely.
It must now appear evident to all, that much fuel and nutritive element
is gained by cooking pease, beans, and lentils in soft water. To comfort
those who, on the plea of uncleanliness, are opposed to rain or cistern
water, we desire to state that rain-water when poured through linen or
cotton cloth is not in the least impure; especially if it be allowed to
stand quietly for a few hours and then have the scum removed from its
surface.
Pease, beans, and lentils produce in the healthy body blood, flesh,
milk, and fat. By their being strained through a coarse sieve they lose
such disagreeable qualities as, for example, the bloating they produce
in the body, which makes them very unpopular with many.
Another great advantage in leguminous vegetables lies in this, that they
contain phosphorus, a principle needed for the formation and
preservation of the bones and brain; therefore we may justly maintain
that legumine is good for the body and mind both.