The Chemistry of Cookery

_boiling hot water_, and put into them two equal pieces of meat taken from the same carcase—two legs of mutton, for instance—and boil them during the same time. Under one of the boilers make a _small fire_, just barely sufficient to keep the water _boiling hot_, or rather just _beginning to boil_; under the other make _as vehement a fire as possible_, and keep the water boiling the whole time with the utmost violence. The meat in the boiler in which the water has been kept _only just boiling hot_ will be found to be quite as well done as that in the other. It will even be found to be much better cooked, that is to say tenderer, more juicy, and much higher flavoured.’ Rumford at this date (1802) understood perfectly that the water just boiling hot had the same temperature as that which was boiling with the utmost violence, but did not understand that the best result is obtained at a much lower temperature, for in another place he states that if the meat be cooked in water under pressure, so that the temperature shall exceed 212°, it will be done proportionally quicker and as well. My reasons for controverting this will be explained in the following chapters. FOOTNOTE: [1] In applying heat to glass vessels, thickness is a source of weakness or liability to fracture, on account of the unequal expansion of the two sides, due to inequality of temperature, which, of course, increases with the thickness of the glass. Besides this, the thickness increases the leverage of the breaking strain. CHAPTER III. ALBUMEN. IN order to illustrate some of the changes which take place in the cooking of animal food, I will first take the simple case of cooking an egg by means of hot water. These changes are in this case easily visible and very simple, although the egg itself contains all the materials of a complete animal. Bones, muscles, viscera, brain, nerves, and feathers of the chicken—all are produced from the egg, nothing being added, and little or nothing taken away. I should, however,