SUGAR and HONEY follow in the stores of the vegetable kingdom. Cane-sugar
and glucose, or grape-sugar, are the two recognized varieties, though the
making of beet-sugar has become an industry here as well as in France.
Grape-sugar requires to be used in five times the amount of cane, to
secure the same degree of sweetness. Honey also is a food,--a concentrated
solution of sugar, mixed with odorous, gummy, and waxy matters. It
possesses much the same food value as sugar, and is easily digested.
With the various FARINACEOUS PREPARATIONS, _Sago_, _Tapioca_,_
Arrow-root_, &c, the vegetable dietary ends. All are light, digestible
foods, principally starchy in character, but with little nutriment unless
united with milk or eggs. Their chief use is in the sick-room.
Restricted as comment must be, each topic introduced will well reward
study; and the story of each of these varied ingredients in cookery, if
well learned, will give one an unsuspected range of thought, and a new
sense of the wealth that may be hidden in very common things.
CHAPTER XII.
CONDIMENTS AND BEVERAGES.
Condiments are simply seasoning or flavoring agents, and, though hardly
coming under the head of food, yet have an important part to play. As food
by their use is rendered more tempting, a larger amount is consumed, and
thus a delicate or uncertain appetite is often aided.
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