Life of Count Rumford. 493 



his inventions and improvements, and, indeed, exposed 

 models of them in the repository of the Institution for 

 workmen to examine and copy, his sole desire was that 

 the public should be furnished with them at the lowest 

 price for which competing mechanics could afford them. 

 He also added an invention of small iron ovens, to be 

 used for all the processes of cookery, including boiling. 

 Next he turned to the materials for, and the mode of 

 constructing, all kitchen utensils, boilers, sauce-pans, 

 stew-pans and their handles, register stoves, steam 

 dishes and stoves, and portable furnaces, with references 

 to the effects of different kinds of lining and glazing on 

 the taste of food and its healthfulness ; and he com- 

 mends the newly introduced Wedgewood and other 

 kinds of earthenware. 



In reading these pages, one can hardly repress a smile 

 to find a philosopher going into such details as does the 

 writer on matters relating wholly to the appetite, the 

 flavor of food, the ways in which it is made palatable, 

 how meat can be cooked so as to retain its rich juices; 

 how it can be roasted in an oven so as even to taste 

 better than when done before an open fire ; how to pre- 

 vent its becoming sodden ; and the reader may even be 

 made conscious of a rising desire within him to get 

 within reach of the hot viands, as the pages tell him 

 how the meat is at one stage of the process to be deli- 

 cately browned, and how savory the fat of mutton and 

 beef, and even venison, may become in one of these 

 wonderful Roasters. The surprise of the reader, too, 

 is enhanced when he calls to mind that the writer, in- 

 stead of being an Apician epicure, or a gormand, or a 

 critical discriminator in the pleasures of the table, for 

 himself was remarkably abstemious, most simple in his 



