Fire-places and Kitchen Utensils. 281 



them and making them shrink till they crack and fall 

 to pieces. 



Steam is never moist. When it is condensed with cold, 

 it becomes water, which is moisture itself ; but the steam 

 in a roaster, which surrounds meat that is roasting, cannot 

 be condensed upon it ; for the surface of the meat, being 

 heated by the calorific rays from the top and sides of the 

 roaster, is even hotter than the steam. 



If steam were a moist fluid, it would be found very 

 difficult to bake bread, or any thing else, in a common 

 oven. 



Meat which is boiled or sodden in steam is put cold 

 into the containing vessel, and the hot steam which is 

 admitted is instantly condensed on its surface, and the 

 water resulting from this condensation of steam dilutes 

 the juices of the meat and washes them away, leaving 

 the meat tasteless and insipid at its surface ; but when 

 meat is put cold into a roaster, the water in the dripping- 

 pan being cold likewise, long before it can acquire heat 

 sufficient to make it boil, the surface of the meat will 

 become too hot for steam to be condensed upon it; 

 and, were it not to be browned at all, it could not possibly 

 taste sodden. 



It appears to me that these elucidations are sufficient 

 to remove the two objections which are most commonly 

 made to the roaster by those who are not well acquainted 

 with its mechanism and manner of acting. 



In my account of the blowpipes, I have said that the 

 current of air which comes into the roaster through 

 them, when they are opened to brown the meat, " drives 

 away all the moist air and vapour out of the roaster." 

 This I well know is not an accurate account of what 

 really happens; but it may serve, perhaps better than 



