In the preceding chapter I described Count Rumford’s modification of the English open firegrate which eighty years ago was offered to the British nation without any patent or other restrictions. Its non-adoption I believe to be mainly due to this—it was nobody’s monopoly, nobody’s business to advertise it, and, therefore, nobody took any further notice of it; especially as it cannot be made and sold as a separate portable article.

An ironmonger or stove-maker who should go to the expense of exhibiting Rumford’s simple structure of fire-bricks and a few bars, described in the last chapter, would be superseding himself by teaching his customers how they may advantageously do without him.

The same remarks apply to his stoves for cooking purposes. They are not iron boxes like our modern kitcheners, but are brick structures, matters of masonry in all but certain adjuncts, such as bars, fire-doors, covers, oven-boxes, etc., which are very simple and inexpensive. Even some of Rumford’s kitchen utensils, such as the steamers, were cheaply covered with wood, because it is a bad conductor, and therefore wastes less heat than an iron saucepan lid.

Rumford was no mere theorist, although he contributed largely to pure science. His greatest scientific discoveries were made in the course of his persevering efforts to solve practical problems. I must not be tempted from my immediate subject by citing any examples of these, but may tell a fragment of the story of his work so far as it bears upon the subject of cooking-ranges.

He began life as a poor schoolmaster in New Hampshire, when it was a British colony. He next became a soldier; then a diplomatist; then in strange adventurous fashion he traveled on the Continent of Europe, entered the Bavarian service and began his searching reform of the Bavarian army by improving the feeding and the clothing of the men. He became a practical working cook in order that they should be supplied with good, nutritious, and cheap food.

But this was not all. He found Munich in a most deplorable condition as regards mendicity; and took in hand the gigantic task of feeding, clothing, and employing the overwhelming horde of paupers, doing this so effectually that he made his “House of Industry” a true workhouse; it paid all its own expenses, and at the end of six years left a net profit of 100,000 florins.

I mention these facts in conformation of what I said above concerning his practical character. Economical cookery was at the root of his success in this maintenance of a workhouse without any poor-rates.

After doing all this he came to England, visited many of our public institutions, reconstructed their fireplaces, and then cooked dinners in presence of distinguished witnesses, in order to show how little need be expended on fuel, when it is properly used.

At the Foundling Institution in London he roasted 112 lbs. of beef with 22 lbs. of coal, or at a cost of less than threepence. The following copy of certificate, signed by the Councillor of War, etc., shows what he did at Munich: “We whose names are underwritten certify that we have been present frequently when experiments have been made to determine the expense of fuel in cooking for the poor in the public kitchen of the military workhouse at Munich, and that when the ordinary dinner has been prepared for 1000 persons, the expense for fuel has not amounted to quite 12 kreutzers.” Twelve kreutzers is about 4½d. of our money. Thus only 1-50th of a farthing was expended on cooking each person’s dinner, although the peas which formed the substantial part of the soup required five hours, boiling. The whole average daily fuel expenses of the kitchen of the establishment amounted to 1-20th of a farthing for each person, using wood, which is much dearer than coal. At this rate, one ton of wood should do the cooking for ten persons during two years and six days, or one ton of coal would supply the kitchen of such a family three and a half years.

The following is an abstract of the general principles which he expounds for the guidance of all concerned in the construction of cooking stoves.

1. All cooking fires should be enclosed.

2. Air only to be admitted from below and under complete control. All air beyond what is required for the supply of oxygen “is a thief.”

3. All fireplaces to be surrounded by non-conductors, brickwork, not iron.

4. The residual heat from the fireplace to be utilized by long journeys in returning flues, and by doing the hottest work first. 5. Different fires should be used for different work.

The first of these requirements encounters one of our dogged insular prejudices. The slaves to these firmly believe that meat can only be roasted by hanging it up to dry in front of an open fire; their savage ancestors having held their meat on a skewer or spit over or before an open fire, modern science must not dare to demonstrate the wasteful folly of the holy sacrifice. Their grandmothers having sent joints to a bakehouse, where other people did the same, and having found that by thus cooking beef, mutton, pork, geese, etc., some fresh, and some stale, in the same oven, the flavors became somewhat mixed, and all influenced by sage and onions, these people persist in believing that meat cannot be roasted in any kind of closed chamber.

Rumford proved the contrary, and everybody who has fairly tried the experiment knows that a properly ventilated and properly heated roasting oven produces an incomparably better result than the old desiccating process.

Rumford’s roaster was a very remarkable contrivance, that seems to have been forgotten. It probably demands more intelligence in using it than is obtainable in a present-day kitchen. When the School Boards have supplied a better generation of domestic servants we may be able to restore its use.

It is a cylindrical oven with a double door to prevent loss of heat. In this the meat rests on a grating over a specially constructed gravy and water dish. Under the oven are two “blow-pipes,” i.e., stout tubes standing just above the fire so as to be made red hot, and opening into the oven at the back, and above the fireplace in front, where there is a plug to be closed or open as required. Over the front part of the top of the oven is another pipe for carrying away the vapor. It is thus used: The meat is first cooked in an atmosphere of steam formed by the boiling of water placed in the bottom of the double dish, over which the meat rests. When by this means the meat has been raised throughout its whole thickness to the temperature at which its albumen coagulates, the plugs are removed from the blow-pipes, and then the special action of roasting commences by the action of a current of superheated air which enters below and at the back of the oven, travels along and finds exit above and in front of the steam-pipe before named.

The result is a practical attainment of theoretical perfection. Instead of the joint being dried and corticated outside, made tough, leathery, and flavorless to about an inch of depth, then fairly cooked an inch further, and finally left raw, disgusting, and bloody in the middle, as it is in the orthodox roasting by British cooks, the whole is uniformly cooked throughout without the soddening action of mere boiling or steaming, as the excess of moisture is removed by the final current of hot dry air thrown in by the blow-pipes, which at the same time give the whole surface an uniform browning that can be regulated at will without burning any portion or wasting the external fat.

Rumford’s second rule, that air be admitted only from below, and be limited to the requirements, is so simple that no comment upon it is needed. Although we have done so little in the improvement of domestic fireplaces, great progress has been made in engine furnaces, blast furnaces, and all other fireplaces for engineering and manufacturing purposes. Every furnace engineer now fully appreciates Rumford’s assertion that excess of cold air is a thief.

The third rule is one which, as I have already stated, stands seriously in the way of any commercial “pushing” of Rumford’s kitchen ranges. Those which he figures and describes are all of them masonic structures, not ironmongery; the builder must erect them, they cannot be bought ready-made; but, now that public attention is roused, I believe that any builder who will study Rumford’s plans and drawings, which are very practically made, may do good service to himself and his customers by fitting up a few houses with true Rumford kitcheners, and offering to reconstruct existing kitchen ranges, especially in large houses.

The fourth rule is one that is sorely violated in the majority of kitcheners, and without any good reason. The heat from the fire of any kitchener, whether it be of brick or iron, should first do the work demanding the highest temperature, viz., roasting and baking, then proceed to the boiler or boilers, and after this be used for supplying the bed-rooms and bath-room, and the housemaid, etc., with hot water for general use, as Rumford did in his house at Brompton Row, where his chimney terminated in metal pipes that passed through a water-tank at the top of the house.

Linen-closets may also be warmed by this residual heat.

The fifth rule is also violated to an extent that renders the words uttered by Rumford nearly a century ago as applicable now as then. He said, “Nothing is so ill-judged as most of those attempts that are frequently made by ignorant projectors to force the same fire to perform different services at the same time.”

Note the last words, “same time.” In the uses above mentioned the heat does different work successively, which is quite different from the common practice of having flues to turn the flame of one fire in opposite directions, to split its heat and make one fireplace appear to do the work of two.

Every householder knows that the kitchen fire, whether it be an old-fashioned open fireplace, or a modern kitchener of any improved construction, is a very costly affair. He knows that its wasteful work produces the chief item of his coal bill, but somehow or other he is helpless under its infliction. If he has given any special attention to the subject he has probably tried three or four different kinds without finding any notable relief. Why is this? I venture to make a reply that will cover 90 per cent, or probably 99 per cent of these cases, viz., that he has never considered the main source of waste, which Rumford so clearly defines as above, and which was eliminated in all the kitchens that he erected.

Let us suppose the case of a household of ten persons, but which in the ordinary course of English hospitality sometimes entertains twice that number. What do we find in the kitchen arrangements? Simply that there is one fireplace suited for the maximum requirements, i.e., sufficient for twenty, even though that number may not be entertained more than half a dozen times in the course of a year. To cook a few rashers of bacon, boil a few eggs, and boil a kettle of water for breakfast, a fire sufficient to cook for a dinner party of twenty is at work. This is kept on all day long, because it is just possible that the master of the house may require a glass of grog at bedtime. There may be dampers and other devices for regulating this fire, but such regulation, even if applied, does very little so long as the capacity of the grate remains, and as a matter of ordinary fact the dampers and other regulating devices are neglected altogether; the kitchen fire is blazing and roaring to waste from 6 or 7 A.M. to about midnight, in order to do about three hours and a half work, i.e., the dinner for ten, and a nominal trifle for the other meals.

In Rumford’s kitchens, such as those he built for the Baron de Lerchenfeld and for the House of Industry at Munich, the kitchener is a solid block of masonry of work-bench height at top, and with a deep bay in the middle, wherein the cook stands surrounded by his boilers, steamers, roasters, ovens, etc., all within easy reach, each one supplied by its own separate fire of very small dimensions, and carefully closed with non-conducting doors. Each fire is lighted when required, charged with only the quantity of fuel necessary for the work to be done, and then extinguished or allowed to die out.

It is true that Rumford used wood, which is more easily managed in this way than coal. If we worked as he did, we might use wood likewise, and in spite of its very much higher price do our cooking at half its present cost. This would effect not merely “smoke abatement” but “smoke extinction” so far as cooking is concerned. But the lighting of fires is no longer a troublesome and costly process as in the days of halfpenny bundles of firewood. To say nothing of the improved fire-lighters, we have gas everywhere, and nothing is easier than to fix or place a suitable Bunsen or solid flame burner under each of the fireplaces (an iron gaspipe, perforated below to avoid clogging, will do), and in two or three minutes the coals are in full blaze; then the gas may be turned off. The writer has used such an arrangement in his study for some years past, and starts his fire in full blaze in three minutes quite independent of all female interference. I have no doubt that ultimately gas will altogether supersede coal for cooking; but this and all other scientific improvements in domestic comfort and economy must be impossible with the present generation of uneducated domestics, whose brains (with few exceptions) have become torpid and wooden from lack of systematic exercise during their period of growth.