Subject: Re: nightshades?

From: [email-masked] (Jay Mann)
Date: 4 Oct 1996 20:06:40 GMT

While we're talking about solanaceous crops, here are some quotes from a 
biography of Count Rumford (born Benjamin Thompson in Massachusetts, 
1771) by Sanborn C Brown.  Count Rumford was an adventurer, a spy, a 
pioneer physicist, developer of the modern fireplace and a pioneer 
nutritionist.  At one stage he was in charge of feeding soldiers 
and poor in Bavaria. For five years he experimented with hundreds of 
people in his Miliatary Workhouse and Poor People's Institute in Munich, 
deciding that soup would be the best form of nutrition, and that a soup 
with barley, peas and potatoes was best.   Because food eaten slowly was 
more satisfying he added stale bread that had been fried crips, forcing 
the soup-eater to chew a considerable length of time.

"He found potatoes to be cheap and filling, but since they were not 
considered fit to eat in Bavaria, for a while he had to smuggle them into 
his kitchen.  All the preparing of potatoes was done in a sealed room 
barred to all but some trusted cooks.  It was not until after the 
potatoes had beeniused in the soups ofr some months that he confessed 
their use; thereafter, potatoes became a staple of the Bavarian diet, and 
in central Europe generally."

A typical Rumford recipe was in quantities to feed 1200 people.  But the 
proportions for one portion are: 1 oz pearl barley, 1 oz peas, 3 oz 
potatoes, 1/4 oz bread, 1/4 oz salt, 1/2 oz vinegar, 14 oz water.  
Apparently "Rumford soups" are still found in continental cookbooks.

Jay D Mann  <[email-masked]>
Christchurch, New Zealand