THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY. 513 



the meat, keeping it below the cooking-point. If the air be heated 

 above this, the evaporation will go on with proportionate rapidity, and 

 as nearly one thousand degrees of heat are lost as temperature, and 

 converted into expansive force whenever and wherever evaporation of 

 water occurs, the film of hot, dry air touching the meat is cooled by 

 this evaporation, and sinks immediately, to be replaced by a rising 

 film of lighter, hotter, and drier air, which drinks in more vapor, cools 

 and sinks, to give place to another, and so on till the inner juices grad- 

 ually ooze between the fibers to the porous surface, where they are 

 carried away by the hot, dry air, and a hard, leathery, unmasticable 

 mass of desiccated gelatine, albumen, fibrin, etc., is produced, which, if 

 given to a dog for the purpose of watching its effect on the animal, 

 would render an unlicensed experimenter liable to prosecution under 

 the vivisection act. 



Now, let us suppose a similar beefsteak to be cooked by radiant 

 heat, with the least possible co-operation of convection. 



To effect this, our source of heat must be a good radiator. Glow- 

 ing solids are better radiators than ordinary flames ; therefore coke, or 

 charcoal, or ordinary coal, after its bituminous matter has done its 

 flaming, should be used, and the steak or chop may be placed in front 

 or above a surface of such glowing carbon. In ordinary domestic 

 practice it is placed on a gridiron above the coal, and therefore I will 

 consider this case first. 



The object to be attained is to raise the juices of the meat through- 

 out 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 to any considerable extent ; 

 therefore the meat should be placed as near to the surface of the glow- 

 ing 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 flavor, 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 

 vapors. 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-oil, on a beef- 

 steak a little beef-oil, more or less blackened by mutton-carbon or 

 beef-carbon. But these oils and carbons have no other flavor than 

 that of cooked mutton and cooked beef ; therefore they are perfectly 

 innocent, in spite of their guilty black appearances. 



If any of my readers are skeptical, let them appeal to experiment, 

 by putting a mutton-chop to the torture, and taking its own confes- 



TOL. XXIII. 33 



