Chestnuts and Indian corn, the meal of which is made into a dish called _polenta_, something like our mush, are also used, but macaroni is found at every table, noble or peasant's.

No form of wheat presents such condensed nourishment, and it deserves larger space on our own bills of fare than we have ever given it.
In Spain we find the _olla podrida_, a dish containing, as chief ingredient, the _garbanzo_ or field-pea: it is a rich stew, of fowls or bacon, red peppers, and pease.

Red pepper enters into most of the dishes in torrid climates, and there is a good and sufficient reason for this apparent mistake.

Intense and long-continued heat weakens the action of the liver, and thus lessens the supply of bile; and red pepper has the power of stimulating the liver, and so assisting digestion.

East Indian curries, and the Mexican and Spanish _olla_, are therefore founded on common-sense.
In France the _pot-au-feu_, or soup-pot, simmers in every peasant or middle-class home, and is not to be despised even in richer ones.