1 88 On the Construction of Kitchen 



among people of fashion, to dine one day in the week 

 (Saturday) on salt-fish; and a long habit of preparing the 

 same dish has, as might have been expected, led to very 

 considerable improvements in the art of cooking it. I 

 have often heard foreigners, who have assisted at these 

 dinners, declare that they never tasted salt-fish dressed 

 in such perfection ; and I well remember that the secret 

 of cooking it is to keep it a great many hours in water 

 that is just scalding-hot, but which is never made ac- 

 tually to boil. 



I had long suspected that it could hardly be possible 

 that precisely the temperature of 2 1 2 degrees of Fahren- 

 heit's thermometer (that of boiling water) should be that 

 which is best adapted for cooking all sorts of food ; but 

 it was the unexpected result of an experiment that I 

 made with another view which made me particularly at- 

 tentive to this subject. Desirous of finding out whether 

 it would be possible to roast meat in a machine I had 

 contrived for drying potatoes, and fitted up in the kitchen 

 of the House of Industry at Munich, I put a shoulder of 

 mutton into it, and after attending to the experiment 

 three hours, and finding it showed no signs of being 

 done, I concluded that the heat was not sufficiently 

 intense ; and, despairing of success, I went home rather 

 out of humour at my ill success, and abandoned my 

 shoulder of mutton to the cook-maids. 



It being late in the evening, and the cook-maids 

 thinking, perhaps, that the meat would be as safe in the 

 drying-machine as anywhere else, left it there all night 

 When they came in the morning to take it away, intend- 

 ing to cook it for their dinner, they were much surprised 

 to find it already cooked, and not merely eatable, but 

 perfectly done, and most singularly well-tasted. This 



