COUNT KUMFORD'S COOKIXG-STOVES. 47 



3. All fireplaces to be surrounded by non-conductors, brick- 

 work, not iron. 



4. The residual heat from the fireplace to be utilized by long 

 journeys in returning flues, and by doing the hottest work .first. 



5. Different fires should be used for different work. 



The first of these requirements encounters one of our dogged 

 insular prejudices. The slaves to these firmly believe that 

 meat can only be roasted by hanging it up to dry in front of an 

 open fire ; their savage ancestors having held their meat on a 

 skewer or spit over or before an open fire, modern science must 

 not dare to demonstrate the wasteful folly of the holy sacrifice. 

 Their grandmothers having sent joints to a bakehouse, where 

 other people did the same, and having found that by thus 

 cooking beef, mutton, pork, geese, etc., some fresh, and some 

 stale, in the same oven, the flavors became somewhat mixed, 

 and all influenced by sage and onions, these people -persist jn 

 believing that meat cannot be roasted in any kind of closed 

 chamber. 



Rumford proved the contrary, and everybody who has 

 fairly tried the experiment knows that a properly ventilated 

 and properly heated roasting oven produces an incomparably 

 better result than the old desiccating process. 



Rumford' s roaster was a very remarkable contrivance, 

 that seems to have been forgotten. It probably demands 

 more intelligence in using it than is obtainable in a present-day 

 kitchen. When the School Boards have supplied a better 

 generation of domestic servants we may be able to restore its 

 use. 



It is a cylindrical oven with a double door to prevent loss of 

 heat. In this the meat rests on a grating over a specially con- 

 structed gravy and water dish. Under the oven are two 

 " blow-pipes" i.e. stout tubes standing just above the fire so 

 as to be made red hot, and opening into the oven at the back, 

 and above the fireplace in front, where there is a plug to be 

 closed or open as required. Over the front part of the top of 

 the oven is another pipe for carrying away the vapor. It is 

 thus used : The meat is first cooked in an atmosphere of 

 steam formed by the boiling of water placed in the bottom of 

 the double dish, over which the meat rests. When by this 

 means the meat has been raised throughout its whole thickness 

 to the temperature at which its albumen coagulates, the plugs 

 are removed from the blowpipes, and then the special action of 

 roasting commences by the action of a current of superheated 



