KEYWORDS: food, health, recipes

Trall, Russell Thacher. The New Hydropathic Cook-Book

SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):

In many respects, this is an updated version of Kellogg's earlier book, Every-Day Dishes and Every-Day Work (1896). The stated aim here is “to present a selection of well-tested recipes suited to the needs of the constantly increasing number of people who are desirous of making health the object of their daily meals” (5).

She first considers various ways of preparing food, such as boiling, roasting, and steaming before explaining how to measure and combine ingredients. The remaining chapters discuss different kinds of food and the preparation of each: bread and bread-making, porridges, vegetables, soups, and desserts, to name but a few. She includes a section on “Vegetable Substitutes for Flesh Foods” (67), the most important of which are “nuts and leguminous seeds” (67). Of the former, Kellogg says that “[d]ifferent nuts, reduced to a fine meal and thoroughly cooked, are now manufactured into a variety of palatable, wholesome, and easily digestible products” (70-71), at the Kelloggs's Battle Creek Sanitarium. “Of these products” she singles out “Protose, or vegetable meat” as “a perfect substitute for flesh food, containing the same food elements as beef and mutton” and ultimately constituting a “better-balanced food than lean meat” (71). She offers more than 100 recipes based on meat substitutes, including protose steak, protose stew, and protose fricassee.

She also includes a section with recipes especially developed for invalides. Regardless of the illness, Kellogg forcefully rejects the use of meat products as medication, insisting that “beef tea and meat broths should be wholly discarded in cases of fever.” Instead, “fruit soups, fruit jellies prepared with Sanitas Vegetable Gelatine ... fruit gruels, Gluten and Granose gruels, will afford a variety for much choice” (248). Depending on the exact constitution of the patient, Kellogg recommends “Granose Flakes, Granola, Granuto, … Granose Biscuit, … Malted Nuts and other nut broths and bouillons,” as well as Protose and a rich variety of fruits and vegetables (249).