COUNT RUMFORD'S COOKING-STOVES. 323 



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 somestale, in the 

 same oven, the flavors became somewhat mixed, and all 

 influenced by sage and onions, these people persist in 

 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 incompara- 

 bly 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 

 constructed gravy and water dish. Under the oven are two 

 "Wow-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 fircpla.ce 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 bot- 

 tom 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 coagu- 

 lates, the plugs are removed from the blow-pipes, and then 

 the special action of roasting commences by the action of a 



