into the retort while its contents were undergoing
an alchemical digestion and change.

But what soups can they make who add
borage and chicory to chicken broth, make a
beer soup of powdered bread and beer with
cumin seeds, a couple of eggs, and a bit of butter,
or of beer and milk equally mixed with yolk of
egg and butter? Who make a soup stock of meal
fried brown in butter, who make soup with help
of butter and egg, with water, milk, or buttermilk,
out of green grapes, grated cheese, or
parsley-roots? Two or three eggs, a bit of
butter, and an onion, with plenty of hot water,
will make a family soup over which many a
German peasant has said grace with true
thanksgiving before cutting his bread into it, and
accounting himself well fed. The ingenious
Count Rumford—so true to principles that he
wore in winter a white hat and white coat to
economise the heat of his person by saving the
difference of radiation between white and black
—tells us, in his essay on Food, that after an
experience of more than five years in feeding the
poor at Munich, during which time every
experiment was made that could be devised, in
choice of articles and in their combinations and
proportions, it was found that the cheapest,
most savoury, and most nourishing food that
could be procured, was a soup composed of
pearl barley, peas, potatoes, cuttings of fine
wheaten bread, vinegar, salt, and water in
certain proportions. The pearl barley was first
boiled in the water, then the peas were added,
and the boiling continued over a gentle fire for
about two hours; then the peeled potatoes were
added, and the boiling went on for another hour,
with frequent stirring to reduce the mixture to
one uniform pulp; vinegar and salt were added
last, and the mixture was then, immediately
before being served, poured on the cuttings of
bread. The bread used at Munich was the stale
unsaleable bread given by the bakers. The
staler the better, it was found. For, staleness
makes some mastication necessary, and mastication
seems very powerfully to assist in the
promoting of digestion. It likewise prolongs the
enjoyment of eating—a matter in itself of great
importance. The allowance of such soup to each
person, bread included, was about a pound and
a quarter, and this proved to be a sufficient meal
for a healthy person, though it contained only
six ounces of solid matter. Even from this the
potatoes might be omitted, leaving less than
five ounces of solid, but the barley was, of all
its ingredients, the most essential. "No
substitute," says the philosopher, "that I could
ever find for it among all the varieties of corn
and pulse of the growth of Europe, ever
produced half the effect; that is to say, half the
nourishment at the same expense. Barley may,
therefore, be considered as the rice of Great
Britain. It requires, it is true, a great deal of
boiling; but when it is properly managed, it
thickens a vast quantity of water, and, as I
suppose, prepares it for decomposition. It also
gives the soup into which it enters as an ingredient
a degree of richness which nothing else
can give. It has little or no taste in itself but
when mixed with other ingredients which are
savoury, it renders them peculiarly grateful to
the palate. It is a maxim as ancient, I believe,
as the time of Hippocrates, that 'whatever
pleases the palate nourishes;' and I have often
had reason to think it perfectly just. Could it
be clearly ascertained and demonstrated, it
would tend to place cookery in a much more
respectable situation among the arts than it now
holds." Agriculturists, it is urged, have found
how, in the feeding even of cattle, nourishing
power is increased by cookery. "There is some
undiscovered secret of nature in all this," Count
Rumford said, "and it seems to me to be more
than probable that the number of inhabitants
who may be supported in any country upon its
internal produce, depends almost as much upon
the state of the art of cookery as upon that of
agriculture." Now the cook approaches nearest
to the poet, the true maker or original producer,
when his soul is expressed in soup. He is a
Shakespeare of the kitchen who, mastering the
subtleties of animal nutrition, and penetrating as
by inspiration to the deepest mysteries of food,
can produce new forms in infinite diversity of
palatable soup that feeds flesh, bone, and nerve.

All food should be very palatable, and nothing
is easier than, by flavouring a tasteless basis, to
make soup very grateful to the taste. Nothing,
also, can be cheaper. By reducing indefinitely
the size of the flavouring particles, they are
made to act upon the palate over a wide surface,
and if we can only prevent a soup thus flavoured,
say with a morsel of meat, from being swallowed
too soon, as by mixing it with some hard tasteless
substance, such as morsels of bread toasted
dry, which compel mastication, the enjoyment
of eating may be very much prolonged.  Enjoyments
of life are few to the poor; eating was
meant to be a common pleasure, and is unwholesome
when it is unpleasant. Even the glutton
is the better for it, if he can be shown how to
gormandise for two hours upon two ounces of
meat. Count Rumford was led to consider this
subject, by observing, when he was with their
army, how the gormandising Bavarian soldiers
were stout, strong, and healthy upon twopence a
day, or but half their pay, spent for the food of
each. For this money they not only throve on
savoury food, but procured themselves, to a
surprising degree, the prolonged pleasure of eating.

The first soup contrived by Count Rumford for
the Munich House of Industry, of pearl barley and
peas without potatoes, cost a trifle more than a
third of a penny for each of one thousand two
hundred persons fed, including payment of cooks and
all expenses of the kitchen. This cost was reduced
by the introduction of potatoes. But against
potatoes prejudice was so strong, that they were
at first smuggled into a secret chamber and
there boiled into a pulp which contained no
evidence of their identity, before they were carried
into the public kitchen and mixed with the soup.
The wonderful improvement of the soup was
applauded so loudly, that at last the secret was
disclosed, and the potatoes got the credit due to them.