THE ART OF COOKING. 3 



inventions on "which I have experimented personally in such 

 scraps of time as I could spare from my regular occupation, and 

 on nearly two years' use of my apparatus in my own family. 



I will challenge attention and discussion by first submitting 

 some very positive and dogmatic statements, subsequently sus- 

 taining them by such proofs as I have to offer : 



1. Special apparatus for boiling and frying has been adequate- 

 ly and suitably developed for the use of those who can afford 

 these somewhat wasteful methods of preparing food, yet excellent 

 when skillfully practiced. 



2. The ordinary methods of frying are utterly bad and wasteful. 



3. Bread may be baked suitably in a brick oven, and also eco- 

 nomically, when the work is done upon a large scale. 



4. It is very difficult to bake bread in a suitable way in the 

 common iron stove or range ; for this, among other reasons, most 

 of the bread consumed in this country is very bad, although we 

 have the greatest abundance of the best material. 



5. Meats may be well roasted in a costly manner before an 

 open fire. 



6. Aside from the exceptional apparatus or methods named, 

 substantially all the modern cooking stoves and ranges are waste- 

 ful and more or less unsuitable for use. All the ordinary meth- 

 ods of quick baking, roasting, and boiling are bad ; and, finally, 

 almost the whole of the coal or oil used in cooking is wasted. 



7. The smell of cooking in the ordinary way gives evidence of 

 waste of flavor as well as a waste of nutritious properties ; ana in 

 most cases the unpleasant smell also gives evidence that the food 

 is being converted into an unwholesome condition, conducive to 

 indigestion and dyspepsia. 



8. Nine tenths of the time devoted to watching the process of 

 cooking is wasted ; and the heat and discomfort of the room in 

 which the cooking is done are evidence of worse than waste. 



9. The warming of the room or house with the apparatus used 

 for cooking is inconsistent with the best method of cooking, and 

 might be compassed at much less cost if the process of cooking 

 were separated from the process of warming the room or dwelling. 



10. No fuel which can not be wholly consumed is fit to use in 

 the process of cooking, and any chimney which creates a draught 

 upon the fuel when in the process of combustion, like the ordi- 

 nary chimney of a house, is worse than useless, since it wastes the 

 greater part of the heat generated from the fuel. 



The true science of cooking consists in the regulated and con- 

 trolled application of heat by which flavors are developed and the 

 work of conversion is accomplished. For this purpose a quantity 

 of fuel is required which is almost absurdly small compared to the 

 quantity commonly used. 



