The Abolition of the Kitchen

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 14, 3 April 1902, Page 17

The Abolition of the Kitchen

It is recorded of a penurious shipmaster that he fed his men on a pound of dried apples each, afterwards oaasing them to drink a quart of water. The result wa 3 to create that comfortable sense of repletion which follows a hearty meal. This shipmaster ia usually quoted as the ne plus ultra of nautical meanness, but if the scientific journals are correct, he was merely anticipating by a few years discoveries that seem exact copies of his method. Travellers and others have long been familiar with tabloids containing nutriment in a highly concentrated form. Desiccated soups and other kinds of food put up in portable form are alao well known But the 'promon' stems likely to oust these from their position, and singularly enough, the method of employing it is an exact counterpart of that mitiatrd by the penurious master mariner ' Promon' is composed of a variety of ingredients. There are Irish stew liver and bacon, boiled fowl, roaet pork and apple sauce, sheep's head pie, and so on. These are compressed by some secret means. A ' promon ' w chewed well and swallowed, and then a pint of liquid taken It is very evident that if the ' promon' comes into general use, it will mean the extinction of the cook and the death of gastronomy. It will also mean the suppreosion of individual taste. The host'who dispenses the meal will no longer be able to reserve slily for himself the most succulent morsel, nor will he be able to help his valued guest to a slice a little • rare.' The fare will be emphatically^ ' pot luck' for all concerned. But, to be serioue, the discovery of new methods of concentrating nutriment, though caloulated to be of inestimable value in emergencies, is likely to have a serious effect on the physical future of the race, and the tendency to use such foods should be discouraged. This is for the reason that mastication is intended by nature to be an indispensable preliminary to digestion. The pleasure of eating, quite apart from any of the grossnegs of the gourmand's appetite, would be quite unknown if we were to gulp down a 'promon, 1 and afterwards deluge it with a pint of liquid. The operation would be quite as prosaic as the stoking of a locomotive with coal, and filling of its tender with water.