1885 New Guide Hotel Bar Restaurant

THE NEW GUIDE FOR HOTELS, ETC.

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CHAPTER XIIL FOODS FOR THE SICK ROOM,

A FEW hints on kitchen work in connection with sick-room foods may not be inappropriate in this work, as at Hotels we often have invalids, accident cases, and the like, and a little knowledge as to the peculiar preparation of the viands fre- quently used in such instances, I presume will therefore not be out of place. There are a many erroneous ideas with regard to the virtues of foods, when they ought to be taken, and the style of preparing them for the sick. Perhaps the greatest com- mon error is relative to Starch Foods. You will meet hundreds of nurses, and people of fair education, who insist that arrowroot, corn flour, rice flour, starch, &c., are all nutritious in themselves, particularly, the two first named. This is an error, arrowroot taken as the purest type of starch food is no more nutritious than chest- nut or potatoe fecule, {i. e. starch) or the corn flours prepared from maize or rice. I heard a very good illustration given of this at a food exhibition when the matter of starch foods was under discussion, **If you believe," said the lecturer, **that there are all the requisites for sustaining life in corn flour, it can easily be tested, live on corn flour and water for a fort- night, and the result will soon be apparent. Starch is a heat giver but not an actual nourisher. Taken with milk, how- ever, or used as vehicle for the conveyance of liquid foods, it is of immense value. New milk from the cow, in its pure state, would be too heavy and dense for an invalid, the parti-