The spirit of cookery

The construction of ovens for baking has of late years undergone considerable modification. Amongst professed bakers and confectioners brick ovens are still most esteemed, as they allow many varying degrees of heat to be applied successively, or in different parts of the oven to very different preparations. But for special trades ovens of iron have been constructed which are provided with movable trays, enabling the baker to bring the component items of •72 the charge simultaneously into as well as out of the oven. These are also provided wuth ixijrometers, or heat-measuring instruments, and thus yield very good results. We have seen them adapted to ships of several kinds, and to field-bakeries for soldiers. Brick ovens, being heated from the inside, exhibit the sufficiency of their heating by the clearing of the surface from black soot, and once charged with preparations to be baked, cannot be heated again until the charge be withdrawn ; but iron ovens are heated from the outside, like those of most kitcheners, and can be heated and reheated without regard to the contents of their interior. They are also a little more economical, as they are heated more quickly, and consume less coal or wood than the brick ovens. A general prineiple of baking is that the oven vmst he sufficiently hot at the moment at which the preparations to be baked are introduced into it ; they must experience the same surprise as that which articles to be fried meet with when they are immersed into the hot fat. An indifferently heated oven does not cause the preparations to rise, but drying them leaves them of a pale colour, which is objectionable in many products. Roasting. — Boasting is that culinary operation in which the English excel all other nations. It consists in bringing a joint of meat, or a small animal, so near to a clear fire that- it may become cooked, and ultimately browned over its surface, and thus acquire that taste and savour by which roast meat excels all other forms of preparation of fleshfood. Meat was formerly most commonly roasted on the spit, a sword- or bayonet-like instrument, which was run through the joint, then supported on two forks, and kept turning before the fire. In the present day, however, a small instrument, the so-called roasting -jack, or from its external shape called bottle-jack, is in prevalent use ; it is wound up like a clock, and turns the meat suspended at its lower eud, first iu one and then in an opposite direction with great precision ; the heat is condensed upon the meat by a parabolic screen of tin-plate ; the whole constitutes an effectual arrangement for joints up to 22 lb., provided the jack be of sufficient size and power. Smaller pieces of meat, such as beef or rump steaks, chops, and fish, have to be roasted on an instrument called a grill, an originally French name for a frame made of crossed or parallel bars, and hence meat so done is called grilled. In this process of grilling most of the gravy which exudes is lost, but this is not much, as the meat retains the greater part and is most juicy.