Fire-places and Kitchen Utensils. 327 



The appearances were just what I expected to find 

 them. The meat in each of the stewpans was suffi- 

 ciently boiled, but there was certainly a very striking 

 difference in the appearance of the liquor remaining 

 in the two utensils ; and, if I was not much mistaken, 

 there was a sensible difference in the taste of the two 

 pieces of meat, that boiled in the earthen stew-pan being 

 the most juicy and most savoury. The water remaining 

 in this vessel and little of it had evaporated was 

 still very transparent and colourless, and nearly taste- 

 less, while the liquor in the copper stewpan was found 

 to be a rich meat broth. 



The result of this experiment recalled very forcibly 

 to my recollection a dispute I had had several years 

 before, in Germany, with the cook of a friend of mine, 

 who at my recommendation had altered his kitchen 

 fire-place ; in which dispute I now saw I was in the 

 wrong, and, seeing it, felt a desire more easy to be con- 

 ceived than to be described to make an apology to 

 an innocent person whom I had unjustly suspected of 

 wilful misrepresentation. This woman (for it was a 

 female cook), on being repeatedly reprimanded for 

 sending to table a kind of soup of inferior quality, 

 which, before the kitchen was altered, she had always 

 been famous for making in the highest perfection, per- 

 sisted in declaring that she could not make the same 

 good rich soup in the new-fashioned boilers (fitted up 

 in closed fire-places, and heated by small fires) as she 

 used to make in the old boilers, set down upon the 

 hearth before a great roaring wood fire. 



The woman was perfectly in the right. To make 

 a rich meat soup, the juices must be washed out of 

 the meat, and intimately mixed with the water; and 



