I have made a malt-porridge by using ground malt, from which I sifted out as much husk as possible, instead of oatmeal. I found it rather too sweet; but, on mixing about one part of malt-flour with four or more of oatmeal, an excellent and easily-digestible porridge was obtained, and one which I strongly recommend as a most valuable food for strong people and invalids, children and adults.
Further details of these experiments would be tedious, and are not necessary, as they display no chemical changes that are new to science, and the practical results may be briefly stated without such details.
I recommend—1. The production of malt-flour by grinding and sifting malted wheat, malted barley, or malted oats, or all of these, and the retailing of this at its fair value as a staple article of human food. Every shopkeeper who sells flour or meal of any kind should sell this.
2. That this malted flour, or the extract made from it as above described, be mixed with the ordinary flour used in making pastry, biscuits, bread, etc.,[1] and with all kinds of porridge, pea-soup, and other farinaceous preparations, and that when these are cooked they should be slowly heated at first, in order that the maltose may act upon the starch at its most favorable temperature—50 or 60° below the boiling point.
3. When practicable, such preparations as porridge, pastry, pea soup, pease-pudding, etc., should be prepared by first cooking them in the usual manner, then stirring the malt-meal or malt-extract into them, and allowing them to remain for some time. This time may vary from a few hours to several days—the longer the better. I have proved by experiments on boiled rice, oatmeal porridge, pease-pudding, etc., that complete conversion may thus be effected. When the temperature of 140° to 150° is carefully obtained, the work of conversion is done in half an hour or less. At 212° it is arrested. At temperatures below 140° it proceeds with a slowness varying with the depression of temperature. The most rapid result is obtained by first cooking the food as usual, then reducing its temperature to 150 and adding the malt flour or extract, and keeping up the temperature for a short time.
4. Besides the malt-meal or malt-flour, which I presume will be preferably made from barley, I recommend the manufacture of what I may call "pearl-malt," that is, malt treated as barley is treated in the manufacture of pearl-barley. This pearl-malt may be very largely used in soups, puddings, and for other purposes evident to the practical cook.
- ↑ I have lately learned that a patent was secured some years ago for "malt-bread," and that it is still obtainable from many bakers, who make under a license from the patentee. The "revised formula" for this, which I have just obtained, says: "Take of wheat-meal, six pounds; wheat-flour, six pounds; malt-flour, six ounces; German yeast, two ounces; salt, two ounces; water sufficient. Make into dough (without first melting the malt), prove well, and bake in tins." Malt-flour is also sold, but at fancy prices, absurdly beyond its just value.
