The Chemistry of Cookery

per cent. are fitted with open ranges of the old pattern. Bottle-jacks, like smoke-jacks and spits, are gradually falling into disuse. When these kitcheners were first introduced, a great point was made by the manufacturer of the distinction between the roasting and the baking-oven; the first being provided with a special apparatus for effecting ventilation by devices more or less resembling that in Rumford’s roasting-oven. Gradually these degenerated into mere shams, and now in the best kitcheners even a pretence to ventilation is abandoned. Having reasoned out my own theory of the conditions demanded for perfect roasting some time ago (about 1860, when I lectured on ‘Household Philosophy,’ to a class of ladies at the Birmingham and Midland Institute), I have watched the gradual disappearance of these concessions to popular prejudice with some interest, as they show how practical experience has confirmed my theory, which, as already expounded, is that _fresh meat should be cooked by the action of radiant heat, projected towards it from all sides, while it is immersed in an atmosphere nearly saturated with its own vapours_. Let it be clearly understood that I refer to the vapours as they rise from the meat, and not to the vapour of burnt dripping, which Rumford describes. The acrid properties of the products of such partial dissociation are far better understood by modern chemists than they were in Rumford’s time. His water dripping-pan effectually prevents their formation. It is still manufactured of the precise pattern shown in the drawing, copied from Rumford’s, and cooks who understand their business at all use it as a matter of course. The few domestic fireplace-ovens that existed in Rumford’s time were clumsily heated by raking some of the fire from the grate into a space left below the oven. Those of the best modern kitcheners are heated by flues going round them, generally starting from the top, which thus attains the highest temperature. The radiation from this does the ‘browning’ for which Rumford’s blowpipes were designed. Here I differ from my teacher, as, according to my view of the philosophy of roasting, the