The Chemistry of Cookery

is usually called roast meat in countries not inhabited by English-speaking people, is what we should call ‘baked meat,’ the very name of which sets all the gastronomic bristles of an orthodox Englishman in a position of perpendicularity. I have a theory of my own respecting the origin of this prejudice. Within the recollection of many still living, the great middle class of Englishmen lived in town; their sitting-rooms were back parlours behind their shops, or factories, or warehouses; their drawing-rooms were on the first-floor, and kitchens in the basement. They kept one general servant of the ‘Marchioness’ type. The corresponding class now live in suburban villas, keep cook, housemaid, and parlour-maid, besides the gardener and his boy, and they dine at supper-time. In the days of the one marchioness and the basement kitchen, these citizens ‘of credit and renown’ dined at dinner-time, and were in the habit of placing a three-legged open iron triangle in a brown earthenware dish, then spreading a stratum of peeled potatoes on said dish, and a joint of meat above, on the open triangular support. This edifice was carried by the marchioness to the bakehouse round the corner at about 11 A.M., and brought back steaming and savoury at 1 P.M. This was especially the case on Sundays; but there were exceptions, as when, for example, the condition of the mistress’s wardrobe offered no particular motive for going to church, and she stayed at home and roasted the Sunday dinner. The experience thus obtained demonstrated a material difference between the flavour of the roasted and the baked meat very decidedly in favour of the home roasted. Why? The principal reason was, I believe, that the baker’s large bread-oven contained at dinner-time a curious medley of meats—mutton, beef, pork, geese, veal, &c., including stuffing with sage and onions, besides the possibility of a joint or two that had been hung longer than was necessary for procuring tenderness. The vapours of these would induce a confusion of flavours in the milder meats, fully accounting for the observed superiority of the home-roasted joints. A little reflection on