PROCEEDINGS OF THE POLYTECH?^IC ASSOCIATION. 391 



either for the sake of variety or to preserve them. Nations 

 which inhabit cold climates and eat oil, cannot improve it hy 

 cooking. But cooking is a necessity for civilization. The men 

 of the sharpest intellect, and who can do the most work, are 

 those who use cooked food. There is alwa3's a chemical change 

 in cooking. In flour, all or nearly all the original chemical 

 principles are changed, and portions before soluble in water, 

 become insoluble. In cooking an egg, the albumen coagulates ; 

 and the same eftect is produced in cooking meat. The best general 

 rule with regard to cooking and to eating, is to cook so and to 

 eat so that the food shall agree with us. What is one man's 

 meat, is another man's poison ; and each must learn for himself 

 what is best. 



Mr. Fisher inc(uired what was the proper temperature for baking 

 bread. 



Mr. Rowell, — An ordinary brick oven is heated to four hundred 

 degrees befoie putting the bread in, and stands at about two 

 hundred and forty degrees when it is taken out. 



Mr. Banks exhibited Morrill's yEro-vapor cooking-stove and 

 apparatus, for alcohol or burning fluid. It is a small, portable 

 apparatus, making no smoke or smell, and the lamp, when filled, 

 Avill burn five or six hours. Flatirons can be heated by it in 

 four or five minutes, the heated air passing directly through the 

 flatiron. 



Mr. Tillman stated that persons using this or similar stoves 

 should be cautioned as to the large amount of poisonous matter 

 thrown off b}' them into the room. They generate a large 

 amount of carbonic acid gas; and there should always be some 

 provision for taking this out of the room, either by a pipe lead- 

 ing into the chimney, or in some other way. 



Mr. Churchill remarked that the water produced in the con- 

 sumption of alcohol would absorb a considerable quantity of 

 carbonic acid gas. 



Mr. Dibben. — The consumption of alcohol was much more 

 harmless than the consumption of coal, ^ or coke, or gas; for 

 these contain phosphorets and sulphurets which are much 

 more injurious than carbonic acid gas. An apparatus like this 

 in a room would not be more injurious than a common stove, and 

 not half as much as a couple of gas-burners. Cooking over 

 alcohol, as in broiling beef steak, does not cause the meat to 

 take a flavor from noxious gases. Coal is cheaper for cooking 



