XVIBreakfasting with Portia
“PROBABLY few persons who are not professionally interested,” said Professor Maturin, “realize how earnestly the schools of to-day are endeavoring not only to conserve the proved excellences of traditional knowledge, but also to provide new varieties of training that are made imperative by present-day conditions. Hence the subjects in the curriculum that appear fads to the fathers—nature study, manual training, physical education, household science and art, music, and the fine arts. Probably fewer yet know that American experiment in one of these fields, especially, has been so notable that the British Board of Education sent a special commission to study and to report to Parliament on the teaching of domestic science or household economics in the United States.
“It was the scientific and comprehensive character of this report, sent me by a young friend, that first informed me of our distinction in this difficult field. This same young person had previously overcome my doubt as to the propriety of making such matters the subject of academicstudy by learnedly quoting Xenophon’s Socrates, to the effect that ‘domestic management is the name of an art, as that of healing or of working in brass, or of building.’
“It should be understood, to be specific, that she, whom we may call Portia, as a present student and a prospective propagandist of domestic science, is about to receive her degree from that part of one of our metropolitan universities which conducts research in education and trains teachers both of the ancient liberal arts and of such modern practical sciences as Portia’s own. After several years devoted to the usual college subjects, her attention is now concentrated upon educational principles and procedures in general, and on the practice and presentation of her chosen subject in particular. For a considerable period she has overflowed with such interesting information concerning the chemistry and biology, the production and manufacture, and the preparation and the assimilation of foods, that I was more than delighted one day to be invited to partake of a breakfast prepared by her and an associate, as one of the numerous practical tests of knowledge and efficiency demanded by her curriculum.
“On my arrival, the Princess Ida who presided over this department of the modern Athenaeumexhibited the equipment for the study and practice of her science,—a technical library of many volumes; elaborate collections of current reports and monographs; photographs, charts, and records of investigations; especially equipped offices and lecture and conference rooms,—and then presented me to the half-dozen instructors under her direction. The laboratories for the biological and chemical study of food materials were not unlike others that I had seen; but those devoted especially to food preparation uniquely combined the facilities of an elaborate club kitchen with the scientific immaculateness of a surgery. The whole I was told, by the way, was merely preparatory to a really perfect set of laboratories which were building.
“A tile-topped laboratory table, with a skeleton gas-stove above, and various drawers and cupboards beneath, stood in the centre of the room for the demonstrator. About this, arranged on three sides, like a banquet table, were perhaps thirty similar but connected desks at which the students sat in trained-nurse uniform, facing their instructor.
“The right hand drawer of each desk contained such familiar small utensils as knives, forks, and spoons, along with certain others thatwould have seemed strange to our grandmothers; all carefully listed, their condition and arrangement being subject to military inspection. Each drawer at the left contained flours, sugar, spices, and condiments in laboratory precision. The cupboard below each desk, closed by a sliding shutter, contained measuring-cups, bowls, platters, pans, and the like; each equipment being adequate for all ordinary cooking processes. Around the sides of the room were stoves and ranges of various designs heated by coal, charcoal, electricity, steam, gas, and oil, not forgetting the professor’s Aladdin oven, or the peasant’s hay-box cooker.
“Here were also immaculate porcelain sinks where uniformed maids cleaned the larger utensils. Each student kept her own equipment neat. Cases and frames held special implements and supplies drawn from a nearby stock-room, or from library or files. Here and there were bulletin boards displaying tables for computing dietaries, and newspaper clippings concerning the cost of living. In one corner, as an interesting reminder of the needs and possibilities of the simple life in the midst of this intentionally ideal equipment, stood an outfit that might be made and used in the remotest rural school—acheap but good oil stove, mounted on the zinc-covered top of a packing-box, that included inexpensive examples of the fundamental implements, and had an upturned fruit crate for a seat. This entire outfit cost about four dollars.
“In one of these laboratories, students were making a comparative, experimental study of breads; halting occasionally to hear from the demonstrator and ponder the doctrine of the progression of batters and doughs from corn bread, through waffles, to twin mountain muffins—‘which are the beginning of cake.’ In another room, fruits were being preserved separately and in combinations, and in all mediums from distilled water to heavy syrups. In a third, the visitor was given, as specimens of material for distribution, a mimeographed recipe; a blue-print diagram of the conventional cuts of beef, lamb, veal, and other meats; and a sheet of small photographs showing how typical cuts of good meat should look.
“Meanwhile, Portia and Nerissa had been busy with the breakfast in a separate kitchen and dining-room, as like as possible to those in ordinary homes, yet planned with the best wisdom and taste of the departmental staff. To thisdining-room the pilgrim was now summoned by his young friend, costumed as a maid and appearing slightly anxious, for she and her ally were also to serve the meal that they had prepared. The Princess Ida’s premier acted as hostess, and a masculine professor and a feminine instructor joined to make a party, typical, the hostess announced, of sedentary men and of moderately active women—a statement that apprised me of the fact that I was considered not merely as a guest, but also as scientific data. The simple goodness of the linen and china, however, was only that of the discriminating home, and the growing plant on the table was there, I was told, for purely aesthetic reasons.
“But superior knowledge and skill entered with the food—stewed prunes and apricots, astonishing in size, delicious in flavor. Although I am unaccustomed to breakfasting at noon, and although years of housekeeping have been unable to blot out the remembrance of previous prunes, I fell to with avidity. My memory of the ensuing conversation is somewhat mingled with later talks with Portia, but then or afterward, I learned that our total consumption of this dish was only about four ounces, at a cost of approximately three cents for four persons. A home, ofcourse, must also count the cost of all the food prepared, but not consumed.
“The delectable quality of the cereal that followed was due, along with its superior digestibility, I was informed, to its first having been briefly boiled in order to open the grains, by bursting, to the action of the gentler after-cooking. The cost of cereal, I was reminded, was small when compared with that of its accompaniments. We ate one cent’s worth of cereal, but the sugar upon it cost an equal amount, and the cream five times as much. But the professor justified the combination because of the constituent elements of the three; cream being largely fat, sugar largely carbon, cereal largely protein.
“When later I asked Portia what this protein was, she replied in a sort of chant, as though she were assisting at some mystic rite: ‘Next to water, protein is the largest ingredient in the human body, forming about eighteen per cent. It is similar to the white of egg, the lean of meat, the curd of milk, and the gluten of wheat.’ This and other intimations gave me to understand that protein is thesine qua nonof dietetics.
“As we enjoyed the admirable omelet which followed—eight ounces: one of proteid, one of fat, one-half ounce of carbo-hydrate; cost tencents for four—the professor informed me that the nutritive value of food is measured by the heat it gives off in combustion, the unit of computation being the calorie, or the amount of heat which would raise one pound of water four degrees Fahrenheit. Protein and carbo-hydrate yield eighteen hundred to the pound, fats about four thousand. The necessary number of calories per day for a professional man is somewhere between the thirty-two hundred averaged by American and the thirty-three hundred averaged by Japanese university professors. The standard is placed at twenty-seven hundred by the special agent in charge of the United States Department of Agriculture’s investigations in nutrition. Hard muscular labor requires half as much again. These figures are the result of measurements, by means of a so-called respiratory calorimeter, of the entire receipts and expenditures of the human body, under varying conditions and for periods of from three to twelve days. These and similar experiments are described in bulletins published and distributed without charge by the Department of Agriculture. Recent experiments by other investigators make the ideal number of calories considerably less.
“Toasted rolls and drip coffee ended our meal;the former weighed four ounces, two-thirds carbo-hydrate, the remainder equally proteid and fat; the ingredients costing only two cents, or as much as the butter used on them. Throughout, of course, no estimate was made of the cost of labor, an element which, together with rent or interest on equipment, usually more than equals the cost of food. Fuel costs, approximately, one-tenth of this amount.
“Coffee was assigned no nutritive value in the tabular statement of our breakfast that Portia worked out and brought me some days later. But as a mild stimulant, it does more good than harm, very much less harm than tea, which, when not freshly made, contains chemicals difficult of digestion. The coffee we four enjoyed cost approximately three cents.
“When Portia told me that she was also to give a luncheon, with soup, entrée, salad, and a sweet, I fear that I was too precipitate in my commendation of her work, my prophecies for her future, and in implying my willingness again to serve the cause of science. I tried my best, however, to be discreet, for I am very anxious to be invited again, and I was rather pleased at my adroitness in presenting her with an individually bound volume of Ruskin, with the red silkmarker at that page of ‘The Ethics of the Dust’ which says of cooking:
“‘It means the knowledge of Medea and of Circe and of Calypso and of Helen and of Rebekah and of the Queen of Sheba. It means the knowledge of all herbs and fruits and balms and spices; and of all that is healing and sweet in fields and groves, and savory in meats; it means carefulness and inventiveness and watchfulness and willingness and readiness of appliance; it means the economy of your great-grandmothers and the science of modern chemists; it means English thoroughness and French art and Arabian hospitality; and it means, in fine, that you are to be perfectly and always “ladies”—“loaf-givers;” and, as you are to see, imperatively, that everybody has something pretty to put on, so you are to see, yet more imperatively, that everybody has something nice to eat.’”