The object of cooking is to render the flesh of animals and vegetable substances easier of mastication, and therefore easier of digestion. How this object is carried out in most English households let each declare for himself. And yet there is nothing in the world so simple and so certain in its effects as the action of fire upon food, if only we can learn to apply and to regulate that action according to certain laws. I propose therefore to devote a short lesson to each of the simplest processes of cooking.

But before doing so I may be permitted here to say a word or two about the management of the kitchen fire. Few ladies, or even those servants whose duties lie entirely upstairs, and who see a bright or blazing fire every time they go into the kitchen, can have any idea how difficult a thing it is to keep up a good fire all day. When I say a "good fire," I mean a good cooking fire - a clear, bright fire, which, without being a roaring furnace, shall yet be equal to any emergency. It can only be managed by constant small additions of coal, unless a great deal of cooking is imminent, and then of course more fuel must be added each time. But a really good cook will so contrive as to have a small, bright fire all day long, even when she is not actually cooking. Whenever I hear that a bit of bread cannot be toasted, or a cup of soup warmed, because the fire has "just been made up," I know what has happened. The cook has allowed the fire to burn down to the last bar of the grate, and then she has emptied half a coal-scuttle on the few live embers. For about two hours, therefore, it is useless to expect any cooking from that fire, and it will be fortunate if no sudden call be made for its services. Now, if the cook had watched her fire, and had kept it supplied from time to time with small portions of coal, this emergency would never have arisen. She could screw up her fireplace to very small dimensions and yet keep an excellent fire, fit for any unexpected demand. It is doubtful whether, when she acts on the momentary impulse of trying to make up for lost time, a cook has any idea of the mischief she does. Letting the kitchen fire, burn low and then flinging on coals, is not only an inconvenient, but it is a recklessly extravagant proceeding. The fire and fireplace have become thoroughly chilled, and the fresh fuel evaporates almost entirely in the form of smoke for a long time before the remainder is in a state to use for cooking.

If this rule of preventing waste by constantly adding small portions of fuel were better understood and acted upon, cooks would not have such a bitter prejudice against the use of coke. It is, of course, absolutely valueless to a half-extinguished fire, especially when, instead of being put on in small quantities, it is flung on in shovelfuls. But to an already clear, well-established fire, nothing is so satisfactory or economical an addition as a few lumps of coke judiciously put on. If frying or broiling is to be done, the fire cannot be too clear, and coke, if it be properly managed, will give the clearest fire in the world, but then it requires a certain amount of intelligence and willingness on the part of the cook to use it to advantage. When I use the word cook, I do not mean only a regular servant, but any young woman who is acting, for perhaps the first time in her life, the part of cook in her husband's, or father's, or brother's house. She will find her culinary labours much simplified if she keeps the needs of the kitchen fire always before her mind. I don't mean to say that such a one may not what is called "make up" her fire, and leave it untouched between breakfast and dinner, and dinner and tea, because the chances are a hundred to one she will not need it, and her duties probably call her elsewhere ; but a cook in a house where there is a family, and perhaps sickness, or even very young children, ought never for one moment to forget or neglect her fire all through the day.

I could give her scientific reasons about radiation, and use many long words to prove to her why, if she keeps her grate well blacked and polished, she will find her fire burns better and gives out more heat, but I prefer to appeal to everybody's experience and common sense if such warmth and brilliancy be not the result of a beautifully clean and shining fireplace.

To Sir Benjamin Thomson (an English knight and an American by birth, but better known to us by his Bavarian title of Count Rumford) we owe perhaps more improvement in the economical management of fuel and the construction of stoves and fireplaces, with due regard to that economy, than to anyone else in modern times. He was induced to turn his attention to the subject by the scarcity of fuel on the Continent, and his ideas naturally expanded and enlarged themselves by constant practice. At last he succeeded in inventing a method of heating houses and of cooking food which did not require much more than half the usual amount of fuel, and this economy in firing became such a mania with him that the joke of the day used to be that his highest ambition was to be able to cook his own dinner by means of his neighbour's smoke.

However that may have been, it is very certain that to Count Rumford we owe a great increase of our knowledge on such subjects, and the reason I mention him particularly in this place is that he never seemed to weary of insisting on the necessity of a well-kept brightly-blacked fireplace to the due economy of the fuel used in it. He explained incessantly how that kind of heat which is absorbed by either black or white surfaces is totally devoid of light, and may almost be considered as pure, radiant heat So that the first point to be taught, in ever so humble a kitchen, is that the fireplace should be exquisitely clean, besides well and brightly blacked, in order to give the fuel which will be used in it a fair chance of giving out, by radiation, every particle of its latent heat.

The next thing to be considered is the division and arrangement of that fuel, beginning from even the starting-point of lighting the fire. A careful housewife - careful either on her own account or her mistress's - will only use half as much wood or shavings to start her fire with as a thriftless one, because she will take trouble to learn that there is a scientific but perfectly simple mode of laying and lighting a fire. She will be told in theory, and prove for herself by practice, that she must thoroughly clear out her grate, clean and brighten it up to the highest pitch, and then place in it whatever is her lightest material, her paper, or dry grass, or shavings, whatever she has at her command. Next come the slender twigs or dried sprays of heather of the country, or the neatly-cut firewood of the town. Unless all this is thoroughly dried over-night, it will be worse than useless, and it is in attention to details of this sort that true economy consists. A damp bundle of wood or twigs will smoulder, and be consumed without making any appreciable difference in the state of the fire, whereas half the quantity, when thoroughly dry, will start a satisfactory blaze in a few minutes. Then should the cinders be thoroughly and carefully sifted; and now-a-days I have no hesitation in saying this is as imperatively necessary in a palace as in a cottage, on account of the increased price of coal. No cinders should be relegated to the dusthole at all, for everything, except actual dust or the hard flakes (called clinkers) left by coke, can be used. The largest cinders may be laid lightly on the logs of the blazing sticks, the smaller ones being thrown up, later, at the back. Cinders are the best material in the world for starting a fire, and even small lumps of coal should only be sparingly used at first. Above all, a beginner should be taught that her fire will never light or burn up if she does not take care to establish a free circulation of air beneath. I am, of course, speaking of ordinary open fireplaces. Stoves and other patent fireplaces are generally constructed on entirely different principles, and require special instruction for the management of their fuel, but this is easily obtained from the person who fixes them.

Taking it for granted, then, that our ideal cook thoroughly understands how to light her fire, and is impressed with a due sense of the importance of a well-blacked shining kitchen-range, or humbler tiny fireplace - the rule is the same everywhere - and that she is one of those capable people who would disdain to shelter themselves behind the excuse of an ill-tempered chimney or a "bad draught," we will presently proceed to see what she should cook upon her fire.