A guide to the food collection in the South Kensington Museum / by Edwin Lankester.

  • Edwin Lankester
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A guide to the food collection in the South Kensington Museum / by Edwin Lankester. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    ing, the “white,” “kidney,” and “round” potatoes being preferred to all others. The potato contains large quantities of water (75 per cent.), and less flesh-forming to the heat- giving matters than any other plant cultivated for human food. It is therefore not adapted for consumption as a principal article of diet, and should only be employed as an addition to more nutritious kinds of food. It contains a variet}r of mineral matters which also render it valuable as an article of diet. It has for many years been liable, in Europe, to a diseased condition in which the water seems to be increased, and decomposition consequently readily sets in. The decayed parts are attended with a Fungus, but this has really nothing to do with the production of the disease. Potatoes are largely employed in this country for the production of starch, which is used for a variety of pur- poses in the Arts. Potatoes are cooked in many ways, and all the varieties of food which can be obtained from the flour of the Cerealia may be procured from the potato, as starch, maccaroni, vermicelli, &c. The quantities of potatoes consumed in the United Kingdom is about ten millions of tons annually. Potato. (Solatium tuberosum.) The Potato, from its poverty in flesh-formers, is little nutritive: 100 lbs. of fresh potatoes contain only l|lb. of flesh-forming matter. In 100 parts there are :—■ Water Flesh-formers Starch - Dextrin Sugar Fat Fibre Ashes - 75-2.^ 1-4. ] 55. 0 4. ( 3-2. f 0-2. 3-2. 0'9. f Water - - 75-2. j Flesh-formers - 1-4. 01 ’ ] Heat-givers - 22-5.* (^Mineral matter - 0 9. The Case shows the actual quantities of these ingredients in 1 lb. of fresh potatoes :— 1. lib. of fresh potatoes containing 75 per cent, of Water. 2. 1 lb. of potatoes after the Water has been evaporated —4 oz. * In this and the following Tables the Heat-givers include Gum, Pectin, and Cellulose or woody fibre, which, as they arc generally indigestible, probably do not act upon the system. They are generally, however, in small quantities.
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