Fire-places and Kitchen Utensils. 231 



inconvenience that must frequently arise from the heat 

 being forcibly drawn away sidewise under an oven or 

 boiler, when it is wanted elsewhere. 



The separate closed fire-place under iron ovens and 

 roasters must be made very small, otherwise the cook 

 or his assistants will sometimes, in the hurry of business, 

 make too large a fire ; the consequences of which will 

 be the spoiling of the food, and the burning and destroy- 

 ing of the oven or roaster. 



Almost all the roasters that have been put up in 

 England have been spoiled in consequence of their 

 fire-places being made too large; and not one has ever 

 received the slightest accident or injury, or failed to 

 perform to entire satisfaction, that has been heated by 

 a very small fire, and never overheated. 



The fire-place for an oven or roaster of sheet iron, 

 from 1 8 to 20 inches wide, and from 24 to 30 inches 

 long, should never be more than 6 inches wide, 6 inches 

 deep, and about 9, or at most 10, inches long; and this 

 fire-place should seldom be half filled with coals. If 

 the oven or roaster be set in such a manner that the 

 flame or smoke from the fire must necessarily spread 

 round it and embrace it on every side, there will be no 

 want of heat for any of the common purposes of cookery, 

 and its intensity may at all times be regulated by means 

 of the damper in the chimney and the register in the 

 ash-pit door. 



It is not easy to imagine how much the business 

 of cooking is facilitated by making the machinery so 

 perfect that the quantity of heat may at any time be 

 regulated with certainty merely by registers and damp- 

 ers, and without adding to or diminishing the quantity 

 of fuel in the fire-place. It is on these advantages, and 



