Part 44

Another great advantage of anthracite is its cleanliness, It may be picked up in the fingers without soiling them, and it is similarly cleanly throughout the house. It produces no “blacks,” no grimy dust, and if it were generally in use throughout London one half of the house-cleaning would be saved. White curtains, blinds, etc., might hang quite four times as long, and then come down not half so dirty as now. The saving in soap alone, without counting labor, would at once return a handsome percentage on the capital outlay required for reconstructing all our fireplaces.

Let us now look on the other side, and ask what are the disadvantages of anthracite, and why is it not at once adopted by everybody? There is really only one disadvantage, viz., the greater difficulty of starting an anthracite fire. Practically this is considerable, seeing that laziness is universal and ever ready to find excuses when an innovation is proposed that stands in its way. To light an anthracite fire in an ordinary fireplace the bellows are required unless a specially suitable draught or fire-lighter is used. Some recommend that an admixture of bituminous coal should be used to start it, but this is a feeble device calculated to lead to total failure, seeing that the sole originator and sustainer of our ordinary use of bituminous coal is domestic ignorance and indolence, and if both kinds of coal are kept in a house a common English servant will stubbornly use the easy-lighting kind, and solemnly assert that the other cannot be used at all. The only way to deal with this obstacle, the human impediment, is to say, “This you must use, or go.” This is strictly just, as a simple enforcement of duty.

At the same time some help should be supplied in the way of artificial modes of creating a draught in starting an anthracite fire. This may be done by temporarily closing the front of the fire by a “blower,” or better still by selecting one of the grates specially devised for burning anthracite, of which so many now are made. Another and rather important matter is to obtain the anthracite in suitable condition. It is a very hard coal, too hard to be broken by the means usually at hand in ordinary houses. For domestic purposes it should always be delivered broken up of suitable size, from that of an egg to a cocoa-nut. For furnaces, of course, large lumps are preferable.

Then, again, anthracite must not be stirred and poked about; once fairly started it burns steadily and brightly, demanding only a steady feeding. The best of the special grates are more or less automatic in the matter of feeding, and thus the trouble of lighting is fully compensated by the absence of any further trouble.

As regards the supply. This for London and the greater part of England will doubtless be derived from the great coal-field of South Wales. The total quantity of available coal in this region after deducting the waste in getting, was estimated by the Government Commissioners at 32,456 millions of tons. It is very difficult or impossible to correctly estimate the proportion of anthracite in this, but supposing it to be one tenth of true anthracite it gives us 3245 millions of tons, or about enough for the domestic supply of the whole country during 100 years, assuming that it shall be used less wastefully than we are now using bituminous coal, which would certainly be the case. But, including the imperfect anthracite, the quantity must be far larger than this, and we have to add the other sources of anthracite.

We need not, therefore, have any present fear of insufficient supply; probably before the 100 years are ended we shall find other sources of anthracite, or even have become sufficiently civilized to abolish altogether our present dirty devices, and to adopt rational methods of warming and ventilating our houses. When we do this any sort of coal may be used.

COUNT RUMFORD’S COOKING-STOVES.

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.