216 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tion technical education, that given in the workshop, etc. ; and tech- 

 nological education, that which should he given as supplementary to 

 all such technical education ? 



In accordance with this, the papers I am here commencing will be 

 a contribution to the technology of cookery, or to the technological 

 education of cooks, whose technical education is quite beyond my 

 reach. 



The kitchen is a chemical laboratory, in which are conducted a 

 number of chemical processes, by which our food is converted from 

 its crude state to a condition more suitable for digestion and nutri- 

 tion, and made more agreeable to the palate. 



It is the rationale or ology of these processes that I shall endeavor 

 to explain ; but at the outset it is only fair to say that in many in- 

 stances I shall not succeed in doing this satisfactorily, as there still 

 remain some kitchen mysteries that have not yet come within the firm 

 gi'asp of science. The whole story of the chemical differences be- 

 tween a roast, a boiled, and a raw leg of mutton, has not yet been 

 told. You and I, gentle reader, aided by no other apparatus than a 

 knife and fork, can easily detect the difference between a cut out of 

 the saddle of a three-year-old Southdown and one from a ten-months- 

 old meadow-fed Leicester ; but the chemist in his laboratory, with all 

 his re-agents, test-tubes, beakers, combustion-tubes, potash-bulbs, etc., 

 etc., and his balance turning to one-thousandth of a grain, could not 

 physically demonstrate the sources of these differences of flavor. 



Still, I hope to show that modern chemistry can throw into the 

 kitchen a great deal of light that shall not merely help the cook in 

 doing his or her work more efficiently, but shall elevate both the work 

 and the worker, and render the kitchen far more interesting to all in- 

 telligent people who have an appetite for knowledge, as well as for 

 food, than it can be while the cook is groping in rule-of -thumb dark- 

 ness is merely a technical operator unenlightened by technological 

 intelligence. 



In the course of these papers I shall draw largely on the practical 

 and philosophical woi'k of that remarkable man, Benjamin Thompson, 

 the Massachusetts prentice-boy and schoolmaster ; afterward the 

 British soldier and diplomatist, Colonel Sir Benjamin Thompson ; then 

 colonel of horse and general aide-de-camp of the Elector Charles 

 Theodore, of Bavaria ; then major-general of cavalry, Privy Councilor 

 of State, and head of War Department of Bavaria ; then Count Rum- 

 ford of the Holy Roman Empire, and order of the White Eagle ; then 

 Military Dictator of Bavaria, with full governing powers during the 

 absence of the Elector ; then a private resident in Brompton Road, and 

 founder of the Royal Institution in Albemarle Street ; then a Parisian 

 citoyen, the husband of the " Goddess of Reason," the widow of La- 

 voisier ; but above all a practical and scientific cook, whose exploits in 

 economic cookery are still but very imperfectly appreciated, though 



