💊 Doctor's Orders 1907

Food for Infants, and its Preparation

Arrowroot, bread and baked flour, ranked as infant diets, with the packet food declared best of all.

From: Mrs. Beeton's All About Cookery
Published: 1907
Yikes Scale: Yikes

Exactly as printed, 1907

We may observe in this place that an occasional change in the character of the food is highly desirable, both as regards the health and benefit of the child; and, though the interruption should only last for a day, the change will be advantageous.

The packets sold as farinaceous food are unquestionably the best aliment that can be given from the first to a baby, and may be continued, with the exception of an occasional change, without alteration of the material, till the child is able to take its regular meals of animal and vegetable food. Some infants are so constituted as to require a frequent and a total change in their system of living, seeming to thrive for a certain time on any food given to them, but if persevered in, too long, declining in bulk and appearance as rapidly as they had previously progressed.

In such cases, the food should be immediately changed, and when that which appeared to agree best with the child is resumed, it should be altered in its quality, and perhaps in its consistency.

Mrs. Beeton's All About Cookery, 1907. Public domain; transcription unaltered.

So what happens if I make it?

Starch is the problem. Infants under about four months cannot digest it well, and a diet built on arrowroot and baked flour provides bulk and very little else — no complete protein, no fat profile, none of the micronutrients.

This is a real and documented cause of infant death in the period. Babies fed on starchy pap failed to thrive, and the failure was usually attributed to constitution rather than to the food.

Notes from the 21st century

The packet foods were the worst offenders. Proprietary infant foods of this era were often little more than sweetened starch, sold with the confident claims the book repeats.
Breast milk or formula, and nothing else. For roughly the first six months, by current guidance. Solids come after, and starch water never.
Beeton is repeating the consensus. She is not inventing this. It was mainstream advice, which is what makes it worth reading now.

Also in this book

Boiled Calf's Udder for French Forcemeat — Udder stewed, pounded to a paste and sieved — one of the three canonical ingredients of French forcemeat.
Custards, Boiled — Three laurel leaves, or lemon rind, or vanilla — Mrs. Beeton offers them as equivalents.
Larks in Onions (Italian Recipe) — Eight boned larks baked inside hollowed onions, heads replaced, eyes removed.

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