274 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[May 11, 1883. 



as it seems to do, the earth itself, is a road to glory. In 

 the Edda it is tlic tlirtecoloured bridge Bifroset, the 

 " quivering track" over which the gods walk, and of which 

 the red is fire, so that the Frost-giants may not cross it. In 

 Persian myth it is Chinvad, the "bridge of the gatherer," 

 flun" across the gloomy depths between this world and the 

 home of the blessed ; in Islam it is El-Sirat, the bridge 

 thin as a hair and sharp as a scimitar, stretching from this 

 world to the next ; among the Greeks it was Iris, the 

 messenger from J5eus to men, cliarged with tidings of war 

 and tempest ; to the Finns it was the bow of Tiernes, the 

 wod of thunder ; whilst to the Jew it was the mes- 

 senger of grace from the Eternal, who did set 

 " his bow in tlie clouds " as the promise that never 

 a"ain should the world be destroyed by flood. Such 

 belief in the heavens as the field of activities profoundly 

 aflfecting the fortunes of mankind, and in the stars as 

 influencing their destinies, has been persistent in the 

 human mind. Tlie delusions of the astrologer are em- 

 balmed in language, as when, forgetful of a belief shared 

 not only by sober theologians, but by Tycho Brahe and 

 Kepler, we speak of "disaster," of our friends as "jovial," 

 "saturnine," or "mercurial." But the illusions of the 

 savage or semi- civilised abide as an animating part of many 

 a faith, undisturbed by a science which has swept the skies 

 and found no angels there, and whose keen analysis separates 

 for ever the ancient belief in a connection between the 

 planets and man's fate. For convenience' sake, we retain on 

 our celestial maps and globes the men and monsters pictured 

 by barbaric fancy in the star-positions and clusters, noting 

 these as interesting examples of survival. Yet we are the 

 willing dupes of illusions nebulous as these, and, charm he 

 never so wisely, the Time-Spirit fails to disenchant us. 



If the sun and moon are the parents of the stars, tlie 

 heavens and the earth are the parents of all living things. 

 Of this widely-found myth, one of the most striking 

 specimens occurs among the Maoris. From Rangi, the 

 heaven, and Papa, the earth, sprang all living things ; but 

 earth and sky clave togetlier, and darkness rested on 

 them and their children, who debated whether they 

 should rend them asunder or slay them. Then Tane- 

 mahuta, father of forests, reasoned that it was better to 

 rend them, so that the heaven might become a stranger, 

 and the earth remain as their nursing-mother. One after 

 another they strove to do this, but in vain, until Tane- 

 mahuta, with giant strength and strain, pressed down the 

 earth and thrust upward the heaven. But one of his 

 brothers, father of wind and storm, who had not 

 agreed to this parting of his parents, followed Rangi 

 into the sky, and thence sent forth his progeny, " the 

 mighty winds, the fierce squalls, the clouds dense and 

 dark, wildly drifting, wildly hunting," himself rushing 

 on his foe, snapping the huge trees that barred Iiis path, 

 and strewing their trunks and branches on the ground, 

 while the sea was lashed into high-crested waves, and all the 

 cre.atures therein aflrighted. The fish darted hither and 

 thither, but the reptiles fled into the forests, causing quarrel 

 between Tangaron, the ocean-god, and Tane-mahuta for 

 giving them shelter. So the brothers fought, the ocean- 

 god wrecking the canoes and .sweeping houses and trees 

 beneath the waters, and had not Papa hidden the gods of 

 the tilled food and the wild within her bosom, they would 

 have perished. Wars of revenge followed quickly one 

 upon the other ; the storm-god's anger was not soon ap- 

 peased ; so tliat the devastation of the earth was well-nigh 

 complete. But, at last, li^ht .arose, and quiet ensued, and 

 the dry land appeared. Rangi and Papa, parted for ever, 

 quarrelled no more, but helped the one the other, and 

 "man stood erect and unbroken on his mother Earth." 



THE CHEMISTRY OF COOKERY. 



IX. 



By W. Mattieu Williams. 



HAPPY little couples, living in little houses with only 

 one little servant — or, happier still, witii no servant 

 — complain of their little joints of meat, which, when 

 roasted, are so dry, as compared with the big succulent 

 joints of larger households. A little reflection on the prin- 

 ciples applied in my last to the grilling of steaks and 

 chops will explain the source of this little difficulty, and 

 I think .show how it may Vje overcome. 



I will here venture upon a little of the mathematics of 

 cookery, as well as its chemistry. While the weight or 

 quantity of material in a joint increases with the cube of 

 its through-measured dimensions, its surface only increases 

 with their square— or, otherwise stated, we do not nearly 

 double or treble the surface of a joint of given form when 

 we double or treble its weight ; and vice-versd, the less the 

 weight, the greater the surface in proportion to the weight 

 This is obvious enough when we consider that we cannot 

 cut a single lump of anything into halves without exposing 

 or creating two fresh surfaces where no surfaces were ex- 

 posed before. As the evaporation of the juices is, under 

 given conditions, proportionate to the surface exposed, it 

 is evident that this process of converting the inside middle 

 into two outside surfaces must increase the amount of 

 evaporation that occurs in roasting. 



What, then, is the remedy for this 1 It is twofold. 

 First to seal up the pores of these additional surfaces as 

 completely as possible, and secondly to diminish to the 

 utmost the time of exposure to the dry air. Logically 

 following up these principles I arrive at a practical formula 

 which will probably induce certain orthodox cooks to 

 denounce me as a culinary paradoxer. It is this. That 

 the smaller t/ie joint to be roasted, the hiyher the temperature 

 to irliich its surface should he exposed. The roasting of a 

 small joint should, in fact, be conducted in nearly the same 

 manner as the grilling of a chop or steak described in my 

 last. The surface should be crusted or browned — burned, 

 if you please — as speedily as possible in such wise that the 

 juices within shall be held there under high pressure, and 

 only allowed to escape by burst and splutters, rather than 

 by steady evaporation. 



The best way of doing this is a proljlem to be solved by 

 the practical cook. I only expound the principles, and timidly 

 suggest the mode of applying them. In a nietallurgicid 

 laboratory, where I am most at home, I could roast a small 

 joint beautifully by suspending it inside a large red-hot 

 steel-melter's crucible, or better still in an apparatus called 

 a " mutHe " which is a fireclay tunnel open in front, and so 

 arranged in a suitalile furnace as to be easily made red-hot 

 all round. A small joint placed on a dripping-pan and run 

 into this would be equally heated by all-round converging 

 radiation, and exquisitely roasted in the course of about ten 

 to thirty minutes, according to its size. Some such an 

 apparatus has yet to be invented in order that we may 

 learn the flavour and tenderness of a perfectly -roasted small 

 joint of beef or mutton. 



For roasting large masses of meat, a different proceeding 

 is necessary. Here we have to contend, not with exces- 

 sive surface in proportion to bulk — as in the grilling or 

 chops and steaks, and the roasting of small joints — but with 

 the contrary — viz., excessive bulk in proportion to surface. 

 If a baron of beef were to be treated according to my pre- 

 scription for a steak, or for a single wing rib, or other joint 

 of three to five pounds weight, it would be charred on its 

 surface long before the heat could reach its centre. 



A considerable time is here inevitably demanded. Of 



