It is very easy to bake a joint in a large bakers' oven, but not so easy in a little oven in which one side is a great deal hotter than the other, and which also has a trick of very often suddenly getting cold, without any apparent cause. These are the practical difficulties with which most of you have to contend, and I can only give a few hints. First, many persons are tempted by advertisements to try some marvellous stove which saves half the fuel, etc. Experience has taught me that these four-legged toys don't answer, and that those who believe that they will save half their fuel are as credulous as the Irishman who bought two stoves, in order thereby to save the whole.

One most common cause of an oven not baking properly in a shut-up stove is that the stove is not properly cleansed, i.e., the flues get choked with soot. You had better call in some practical man, and watch him clean the stove. You will very likely find that he will get away ten times more soot than you would, as he opens the stove in unexpected places, etc.

To bake a joint properly, the oven must be heated to a temperature above that of boiling water, and you must have the oven thoroughly hot at starting. In each oven there is generally a ventilator, i.e., a little thing that slides backwards and forwards to let in air.

At starting, you can shut this, and then open it after about ten minutes. It is best, just as in boiling and roasting, to expose the meat to a fierce heat at starting, in order to surround the meat with a hard rim to keep in the flavour.

Of course you must place the meat on a tin. Now, very soon this tin will get full of dripping, and if the meat stands in the dripping it will not be nice: it gets sodden. Therefore, raise the meat; there are stands on purpose. If you have not got one, a small gridiron will do. Don't use sticks of firewood, as the heated wood gives a sort of turpentine smell. Next, the fat in the tin, if the oven is properly hot, will smoke and give the joint a greasy taste. Therefore, the tin should be what is called a hot-water tin. A hot-water tin is a double tin, with a place for hot water inside. These are made specially, and are in almost general use. If you have not got one, get two tins, and put one inside the other, and keep them an inch apart with a couple of sticks of firewood, and then fill the bottom tin up to its edge with water. This will prevent the upper tin from getting too hot, as water cannot get hotter than the boiling point.

The difficulty in baking is the basting, which ought to be done, say, every quarter of an hour. Be as quick as you can about it, and don't keep the oven door open longer than you can help. When you baste, always look at the joint, and see if one side is getting more brown than another; if so, turn the joint round; also, it is well very often to turn the joint over. Also, look some half hour before it is done, and see if one part looks pale, and turn this pale side to the hottest place. Of course, with a first-rate oven this is all unnecessary; but I am writing for those who have not got first-rate ovens.

Recollect to keep the oven pretty hot by keeping up the fire the whole time; you should hear it all frizzling inside. For those who under-stand what degrees mean, I will say the temperature of an oven for roasting meat, game, poultry, pork, veal, etc, should be 30° hotter than boiling water; for baking meat pies, 60° hotter than boiling water; and for making puff-paste for vol-au-vents, 80° hotter than boiling water. This last cannot be clone properly in a little common oven.

Next, with regard to time. Remember, baking is much quicker than roasting. This latter process takes a quarter of an hour for every lb.; baking only wants ten minutes for every lb. In both roasting and baking, you must allow a little extra time for any joint surrounded with a thick coating of fat. For instance, you will often find a sirloin of beef cooked, in which the undercut is quite underdone, and the other side well done. This is simply on account of the hard suet fat which covered the undercut.

With regard to getting the gravy from the dregs of the dripping, &c„ act as with regard to roast beef. (See No. 3. - To Roast; latter part).

Pastry of any kind does not want a steaming atmosphere; so never try, if you can possibly avoid it, to bake a pie and a joint at the same time, as you will be sure to have heavy crust.