N·Ature October 2

386 N·ATURE OCTOBER 2. 1943 VoL. 152 Fermented Liquors in Old-time Whether the r·esult has been for the nutritional benefit of the nation as a whole is open to grave Cooking doubt. TnE riboflavin value found in ancient buns and ale H. s. SARSON. (see NATURE, September 4, pp. 273- 274) has an British Vinegars, Ltd., interesting historical background. Few people realize L ondon, S.W.l. to-day the extent to which our ancestors used 1 Austin, "Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books" (Early English fermented liquors for all manner of domestic Text Society, 1888). purposes. ' MS. 4016. "Here Beginnethe a Bokc of ICokery". 1 ' "The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby, Opened" (1669). Out of 516 early English recipes (A.D. 1430-1450), 'Woolly, Hannah, "The Queenlike Closet" (1670). ale, vinegar and wine are given as ingredients 1 Glassc, Hannah. "The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy" 1747, 306 times, often two or ali three together and in and later editions). considerable quantities. Barm and yeast (the • Beaufoy pamphlet, circa 11'!20. latter presumably yeast strained fro:Ql. barm) were also used, apart from their normal function in bread and cakes. Fish was almost invariably cooked in ale, Initiation of Glow Discharges vinegar or wine, and mutton was stewed with all THE form of the breakdown voltage/pressure curve three. for various gases in the pressure range o-5 em. In preparing "Mawmene"•, a mixture of finely m ercury has been established by several investigators. shredded pheasant, partridge and capon, often with The breakdown voltage usually measured is that at the addition of pork or veal, wine was added six which a galvanometer in series with the experimental times, vinegar twice and ale once. The dish was not tube indicates a current of 0-l microamp. This so alcoholic as it sounds ; it was cooked for some current increase is usually so abrupt (Druyvosteyn time and most of the spirit would evaporate, but and Penning\ p. 105 and Fig. 16) that the what subsidiary food factors were left behind ? starting voltage is defined within a range usually 2 3 The sauces used by our ancestors had a base of smaller than the accuracy of measurement. Huxley • , crumbled bread mixed with wine, or vinegar, and P enning\ Bruce6 and Boulind6 , among others, have 2 3 6 flavoured with salt, pepper, mustard, cinnamon, studied He,Ne and N 2 , A,He,Ne•, H 2 , and 0 2 , 5 cloves and other spices, and many of their meat CO,, H 2 and air • dishes were sweetened with honey or sugar comfits. There has been little publi;;hed work dealing Relics of these are our bread sauce with game, red oscillographically with the breakdown processes at currant jelly with mutton and apple sauce with these pressures7 (less than 5 em. mercury). Consider pork. able information is available for air at atmospheric A recipe of Sir Kenelm Digby (A.D. 1669)3 for stew pressuress.s. 1 0 , and more recently, after our own ing rump of beef says, "and put upon it about two experiments were started, data have been obtained quarts of good strong deep well bodied claret wine". for He, N 2 and An at pressures down to 10 em. The gravy must have been rather nice! Sir Kenelm mercury. also used elder vinegar with turkey, capon, hare, Owing to the present circumstances, the time avail pigeon a nd veal, and for fattening chickens recom able for our studies has been limited, and the gases mends that their food should be mixed with ale and used (H2, N 2, 0 2 , A, Ne, C02 , CH,, air and CC1 2F 2 ) adds, "and let them have strong ale to drink". have usually been of commercial purity. Mercury At about this same p eriod Hannah Woolly•, a contamination has been carefully avoided. However, 'domestic science' expert of her time, guaranteed to the results obtained with these gases have been so cure scurvy by steeping scurvy-grass, wormwood, varied and reproducible that some conclusiohs may h orseradish, red-dock root and various other herbs in be drawn for the pressures less than 3 em. mercury. five gallons of ale, the patient to drink a pint night Also, tho use of alternating current (50 c.p.s.), which and morning---approximately a tln·ee weeks course. is unusual in work of this kind, has been found advan It would be interesting to know the ascorbic acid tageous and has led j;o certain improvements in 12 1 3 value of that mixture. t echnique. Other earlier workcrs • have used A.c. Hannah Glasse• (A.D. 1747) used port and sherry in corona studies carried out before modern methods on all possible occasions, stewed her steak in ale and, were applied in this field. Cara must clearly be taken in a chapter headed "For Captains of Ships", gives in the interpretation of tho results, so that effects a r ecipe for mushroom catchup to keep twenty years, due to the A.C. are not attributed to discharges in which starts " Take a gallon of strong stale the gases. The A.C. results have, therefore, been beer.... " checked frequently with D.c., and it is unlikely that In the early eighteen hundreds, pickled herrings any but very minor effects are due to the use of A.c. were still a national dish, great quantities were eaten, However, t.he persistence of met.astable atoms in and there was a thriving Scottish trade in salmon argon apparently causes small currents to flow during pickled in vinegar, which was exported to the growing the positive half-cycles if appreciable currents are industrial towns of the south8• established during the preceding negative half-cycles. These delectable habits died rapidly during the This causes the A.o. peak breakdown voltages in second half of the nineteenth century. Quick trans argon to be consistently less than the corresponding port from the developing railways, the drift of popula D.C. breakdown values, whereas in the other gases, tlOn to the towns during the Industrial Revolution, the A.c. and D.C. breakdown voltages are identical, the growth of vast suburbs with cr-amped kitchens within the limits of experimental error. In accord (later to become our slums), the invention of canning ance with the earlier work•, negative breakdown pre plus the demand of an industrial people for ready cedes p ositive breakdown at the smaller electrode ; prepa.red foods, most of all, possibly, the ever the only exceptions we have found a.re oxygen and air increasing excise on fermented liquors and the decline at certain pressures in the counter, again confirming 6 of h ome brewing-all these played a part in the estaulished data • change. Tho use of a two-beam oscillograph, which allows © 1943 Nature Publishing Group.

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