The Chemistry of Cookery

(not hotel or restaurant cooks) have a vague idea that the metal plate forming the bottom of the frying-pan should directly convey the heat of the fire to the fried substance, and that the bit of butter or lard or dripping put into the pan is used to prevent the fish from sticking to it or to add to the richness of the fish by smearing its surface. The theory which I have propounded above is that the melted fat cooks by convection of heat, just as water does in the so-called boiling of meat. If this is correct, it is evident that the fish, &c., should be completely immersed in a bath of melted fat or oil, and that the turning over demanded by the greased-plate theory is unnecessary. Well educated cooks understand this distinctly, and use a deeper vessel than our common frying-pan, charge this with a quantity of fat sufficient to cover the fish, which is simply laid upon a wire support, or frying-basket and left in the hot fat until the browning of its surface, or of the flour or bread-crumbs with which it is coated indicates the sufficiency of the cookery. The illustration is from Gouffé’s excellent cookery-book already quoted, and is introduced because I have found it so little understood by English housewives. Frying-kettles may now be purchased at all our best English ironmongers, though until recently they were difficult to obtain. My lectures and papers have largely extended the demand and consequent supply. [Illustration: FIG. 7.] At first sight the deep fat bath appears extravagant, as compared with the practice of greasing the bottom of the pan with a little dab of fat, but any housewife who will apply to the frying of sprats, herrings, &c., the method of quantitative inductive research, described and advocated by Lord Bacon in his ‘Novum Organum Scientiarum,’ may prove the contrary. ‘Must I read the “Novum Organum,” and buy another dictionary, in order to translate all this?’ she may exclaim in despair. ‘No!’ is my reply. This Baconian inductive method, to which we are indebted for all