THE ART OF COOKING. 5 



juice, with but very little water, one and three fourths hours ; 

 stuffed tomatoes cooked three quarters of an hour ; a large apple 

 souffle pudding baked one hour. 



The oven having been previously heated one hour, the lamb 

 and the squash were first put in ; later the fish was added ; while 

 these were being served, the ducks and the pudding were being 

 cooked ; the use of the lamp for the whole service was four hours ; 

 the oil consumed, one pint, cost less than two cents ; the cook's es- 

 timate of the coal which would have been required for the dinner 

 had it been cooked in the large stove which has been used in other 

 years, at one and a half to two ordinary hodfuls. 



This was an every-day dinner, to which my guests had been in- 

 vited in order that they might test our common practice. 



I assume that the effect of heat upon food material is what may 

 be called chemical conversion, accompanied, when the heat is ap- 

 plied at a low degree only, by partial evaporation of water, but 

 when applied at a high degree, by partial distillation of the juices, 

 by the cracking or dissociation of the fats, and by the diffusion of 

 the volatile parts of the food in bad smells with loss of flavor and 

 waste of some of the nutritious properties of the material. If the 

 cracking or dissociation of the fats is carried to a point which is 

 very common in iron stoves and ranges, the residuum of the fat 

 becomes very indigestible and positively unwholesome. When 

 rightly cooked and not cracked or dissociated, a certain portion of 

 fat is absolutely necessary to adequate nutrition. Is it not true 

 that we take into our stomachs a great deal too much fat, and that 

 it is eaten in the most injurious form ? 



The preparation of the coffee-berry is the most familiar exam- 

 ple of the development of its properties by the right application 

 of heat. If the berry is dried, ground, and made into an infusion 

 without being roasted, no true or drinkable coffee can be made 

 from it. If overheated and burned, the infusion is acrid and un- 

 wholesome. But when the berry is carefully roasted and ground, 

 the infusion makes true coffee. The flavor and other properties 

 are the actual product of the heat, when scientifically applied. 

 The flavor of the pea-nut is developed in the same way. In the 

 treatment of grain, none yields so great a difference in flavor, 

 according to the method of cooking, as the meal of maize or In- 

 dian corn ; but I find the wheaten bread, whether made of whole 

 or of bolted flour, yields a much finer flavor when baked two or 

 three hours in my pulp oven at 250 to 300 Fahr., than when 

 quickly baked in a common stove or range in one hour at an 

 unknown but admittedly much higher degree of heat. The flavors 

 of the white kinds of fish, such as cod, haddock, flounder, scup, 

 and the like, which are much impaired by the ordinary methods 

 of cooking, are very finely developed when slowly cooked in my 



