1 76 On the Construction of Kitchen 



The cook knows, from experience, that if his joint of 

 meat be kept a certain time immersed in boiling water 

 it will be done, as it is called in the language of the 

 kitchen ; but if he be asked what is done to it, or how 

 or by what agency the change it has undergone has been 

 effected, if he understands the question, it is ten to one 

 but he will be embarrassed ; if he does not understand 

 it, he will probably answer, without hesitation, that 

 " the meat is made tender and eatable by being boiled? 

 Ask him if the boiling of the water be essential to the 

 success of the process, he will answer, " Without doubt? 

 Push him a little farther, by asking him whether, were 

 it possible to keep the water equally hot without boiling, 

 the meat would not be cooked as soon and as well as if 

 the water were made to boil. Here it is probable that 

 he will make the first step towards acquiring knowledge, 

 by learning to doubt. 



When you have brought him to see the matter in its 

 true light, and to confess that, in this view of it, the 

 subject is new to him, you may then venture to tell him 

 (and to prove to him, if you happen to have a thermom- 

 eter at hand) that water which just boils is as hot as it 

 can possibly be made in an open vessel. That all the 

 fuel which is used in making it boil with violence is 

 wasted, without adding a single degree to the heat of 

 the water, or expediting or shortening the process of 

 cooking a single instant. That it is by the heat, its 

 intensity and the time of its duration, that the food is 

 cooked, and not by the boiling or ebullition, or bubbling 

 up of the water, which has no part whatever in that 

 operation. 



Should any doubts still remain in his mind with 

 respect to the inefficacy and inutility of boiling, in culi- 



