The Chemistry of Cookery

raise the juices of the meat throughout to about the temperature of 180° Fahr. as quickly as possible, in order that the cookery may be completed before the water of these juices shall have had time to evaporate excessively; therefore the meat should be placed as near to the surface of the glowing carbon as possible. But the practical housewife will say that, if placed within two or three inches, some of the fat will be melted and burn, and then the steak will be smoked. Now, here we require a little more chemistry. There is smoking and smoking; smoking that produces a detestable flavour, and smoking that does no mischief at all beyond appearances. The flame of an ordinary coal fire is due to the distillation and combustion of tarry vapours. If such a flame strikes a comparatively cool surface like that of the meat, it will condense and deposit thereon a film of crude coal tar and coal naphtha, most nauseous and rather mischievous; but if the flame be that which is caused by the combustion of its own fat, the deposit on a mutton-chop will be a little mutton juice, on a beefsteak a little beef juice, more or less blackened by mutton-carbon or beef-carbon. But these have no other flavour than that of cooked mutton and cooked beef; therefore they are perfectly innocent, in spite of their black, guilty appearances. If any of my readers are sceptical, let them appeal to experiment by putting a mutton-chop to the torture, and taking its own confession. To do this, divide the chop in equal halves, then hold one half over a flaming coal, immersing it in the flame, and thus cook it. Now cut a bit of fat off the other, throw this fat on a surface of clear, glowing, flameless coal or coke, and, when a good blaze is thus obtained, immerse the half chop recklessly and unmercifully into _this_ flame; there let it splutter and fizz, let it drop more fat and make more flame, but hold it there nevertheless for a few minutes, and then