The agent most essential for any kind of cooking is a fire. The most easily made fire is one of dry hrushioood, but this will only burn for a short time, unless the wood be con- stantly resupplied. To make such a fire more lasting,' it is necessary to feed it with thicker wood, split logs, or faggots. With the aid of such a simple fire on the hearthstone we can prepare some simple articles of food in a direct manner. We can grill meat before it, by holding it on a stick near the flame or live coal ; we can imbed sundry tubers, such as 52 THE SPIRIT OF COOKERY potatoes, fungi, such as mushrooms and truffles, or onions, in the ashes, and let them get cooked ; or we can heat stones, and, when they are suitably hot, bake upon them a prepared flour-paste, such as that which yields chuppatties. All these elementary modes of cooking should be well studied by travellers, explorers, colonists, soldiers, and sailors. Next to the fire in importance for cooking is a piot of earthenware or metal, for the reception of food to be cooked in water. Over the simple brushwood fire such a pot would stand on three stones, or as many stones as would be necessary to support it. When such an arrangement of stones round a fire assumes any permanency it is called a hearth. Or the cooking-pot may be suspended over the fire on a tripod, made of three sticks or faggots. From the most simple fireplace of primitive man to the most comp>licated cooking range* of the modern hotel is a great progression of many stages, which we dare not attempt to give even a sketch of, though it would be well worth a special study in con- nection with our subject. Suffice it to say, that in every kitchen heat should he easily applicable to food in three forms : [a] As radiating heat from the open fire, for roasting, grill- ing and toasting ; (5) as conducted heat applied to the bottom of vessels of metal or earthenware, for boiling, stewing, and frying ; (c) as radiating and conducted heat simultaneously, through the instrumentality of an oven. The open fire-grate is that form of cooking apparatus which is in the present day of coal best understood in this country. Ovens are frequently constructed on faulty principles, particularly in this, that they are heated on one side only, and have no bottom heat. Every householder should see that his oven be supplied with heat under the bottom, whether it be by the admission of flame from the fire in the main grate, or by a separate small fire underneath the oven * Range originally meant the Jire-buck, or rost, of parallel bars on the hearth, on which the fire burns, so as to admit air from below. KITCHEN REQUISITES AND CULINARY AXIOMS 53

AI-modernized reading of the original text

The agent most essential for any kind of cooking is a fire. The most easily made fire is one of dry brushwood, but this will only burn for a short time, unless the wood be constantly resupplied. To make such a fire more lasting,' it is necessary to feed it with thicker wood, split logs, or faggots. With the aid of such a simple fire on the hearthstone we can prepare some simple articles of food in a direct manner. We can grill meat before it, by holding it on a stick near the flame or live coal ; we can imbed sundry tubers, such as potatoes, fungi, such as mushrooms and truffles, or onions, in the ashes, and let them get cooked ; or we can heat stones, and, when they are suitably hot, bake upon them a prepared flour-paste, such as that which yields chuppatties. All these elementary modes of cooking should be well studied by travellers, explorers, colonists, soldiers, and sailors. Next to the fire in importance for cooking is a pot of earthenware or metal, for the reception of food to be cooked in water. Over the simple brushwood fire such a pot would stand on three stones, or as many stones as would be necessary to support it. When such an arrangement of stones round a fire assumes any permanency it is called a hearth. Or the cooking-pot may be suspended over the fire on a tripod, made of three sticks or faggots. From the most simple fireplace of primitive man to the most complicated cooking range of the modern hotel is a great progression of many stages, which we dare not attempt to give even a sketch of, though it would be well worth a special study in connection with our subject. Suffice it to say, that in every kitchen heat should he easily applicable to food in three forms : (a) As radiating heat from the open fire, for roasting, grilling and toasting ; (5) as conducted heat applied to the bottom of vessels of metal or earthenware, for boiling, stewing, and frying ; (c) as radiating and conducted heat simultaneously, through the instrumentality of an oven. The open fire-grate is that form of cooking apparatus which is in the present day of coal best understood in this country. Ovens are frequently constructed on faulty principles, particularly in this, that they are heated on one side only, and have no bottom heat. Every householder should see that his oven be supplied with heat under the bottom, whether it be by the admission of flame from the fire in the main grate, or by a separate small fire underneath the oven * Range originally meant the Jire-buck, or rost, of parallel bars on the hearth, on which the fire burns, so as to admit air from below.

The spirit of cookery