The latest improvement in the application of gas to culinary
purpose is due to Mr. Harrison of Clare Market. There are serious objections to the practice which has hitherto prevailed of baking by flames lighted within the oven chamber, but no one had been able to overcome the difficulty of obtaining a sufficient degree of heat, diffused equally over the whole space, from gas burning on the outside. This is what Mr. Harrison has done. His apparatus consists of three chambers placed one above another, and enclosed in an iron ease. The intervals between the sides of the ease and the chambers, and between each adjacent pair of the latter, form a winding flue within which the gas is burned, and the products of combustion, after passing round the chambers and heating them, escape into the chimney without ever coming in contact with the food. In this way pastry, bread &c. are kept free from the unpleasant flavour they are apt to imbibe when exposed to the vapours from burn- ing gas ; nor can there be any mixture or interchange of the odours and savours of different kinds of food baked in the several chambers. The economy of gas too is considerable. The chambers may be heated singly or all together, at a cost of a halfpenny an hour for each. The appara- tus occupies but little space and may be placed in any part of a room where there is a supply of gas. The price is 51. Single chambers, which may stand on a bachelor's table to cook his dinner and boil his kettle, can be had at a lower price.
Previous page
