The Book of Household Management - The Original Classic Edition. Beeton Mrs

wood of dried oak is said to consist of this metal. Blood owes its colour of redness to the quantity of iron it contains, and rain and snow are seldom perfectly free from

       it. In the arts it is employed in three states,--as cast iron, wrought iron, and steel. In each of these it largely enters into the domestic economy, and stoves, grates, and the general implements of cookery, are usually composed of it. In antiquity, its employment was, comparatively speaking, equally universal. The excavations made at Pompeii have proved this. The accompanying cuts present us with specimens of stoves, both ancient and modern. Fig. 2 is the remains of a kitchen stove found in the house of Pansa, at Pompeii, and would seem, in its perfect state, not to have been materially different from such as are in use at the present day. Fig. 3 is a self-acting, simple open range in modern use, and may be had of two qualities, ranging, according to their dimensions, from PS3.

       10s. and PS3. 18s. respectively, up to PS4. 10s. and PS7. 5s. They are completely fitted up with oven, boiler, sliding cheek, wrought-iron bars, revolving shelves, and brass tap. Fig. 4, is called the Improved Leamington Kitchener, and is said to surpass any other range in use, for easy cooking by one fire. It has a hot plate, which is well calculated for an ironing-stove, and on which as many vessels as will stand upon it, may be kept boiling, without being either soiled or injured. Besides, it has a perfectly ventilated and spacious wrought-iron roaster, with movable shelves, draw-out stand, double drippingpan, and meat-stand. The roaster can be converted into an oven by closing the valves, when bread and pastry can be baked in it in a superior manner. It also has a large iron boiler with brass tap

       and steam-pipe, round and square gridirons for chops and steaks, ash-pan, open fire for roasting, and a set of ornamental covings with plate-warmer attached. It took a first-class prize and medal in the Great Exhibition of 1851, and was also exhibited, with all the recent improvements, at the Dublin Exhibition in 1853. Fig. 5 is another kitchener, adapted for large families. It has on the one side, a large ventilated oven; and on the other, the fire and roaster. The hot plate is over all, and there is a back boiler, made of wrought iron, with brass tap and steam-pipe. In other respects it resembles Fig. 4, with which it possesses similar advantages of construction. Either maybe had at varying prices, according to size, from PS5. 15s. up to PS23. 10s. They are supplied by Messrs. Richard & John Slack 336, Strand, London.

       [Illustration: Fig. 2.] [Illustration: Fig. 3.] [Illustration: Fig. 4.] [Illustration: Fig. 5.]

       66. FROM KITCHEN RANGES to the implements used in cookery is but a step. With these, every kitchen should be well supplied, otherwise the cook must not be expected to "perform her office" in a satisfactory manner. Of the culinary utensils of the ancients, our knowledge is very limited; but as the art of living, in every civilized country, is pretty much the same, the instruments for cooking must, in a great degree, bear a striking resemblance to each other. On referring to classical antiquities, we find mentioned, among household utensils, leather bags, baskets constructed of twigs, reeds, and rushes; boxes, basins, and bellows; bread-moulds, brooms, and brushes; caldrons, colanders, cisterns, and chafing-dishes; cheese-rasps, knives, and ovens of the Dutch kind; funnels and

       fryingpans; handmills, soup-ladles, milkpails, and oil-jars; presses, scales, and sieves; spits of different sizes, but some of them large enough to roast an ox; spoons, fire-tongs, trays, trenchers, and drinking-vessels; with others for carrying food, preserving milk, and holding cheese. This enumeration, if it does nothing else, will, to some extent, indicate the state of the simpler kinds of mechanical

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       arts among the ancients. [Illustration: Fig. 6.] [Illustration: Fig. 7.] [Illustration: Fig. 8.]

       In so far as regards the shape and construction of many of the kitchen utensils enumerated above, they bore a great resemblance

       to our own. This will be seen by the accompanying cuts. Fig. 6 is an ancient stock-pot in bronze, which seems to have been made to hang over the fire, and was found in the buried city of Pompeii. Fig. 7 is one of modern make, and may be obtained either of copper or wrought iron, tinned inside. Fig. 8 is another of antiquity, with a large ladle and colander, with holes attached. It is taken from the column of Trajan. The modern ones can be obtained at all prices, according to size, from 13s. 6d. up to PS1. 1s.

       67. IN THE MANUFACTURE OF THESE UTENSILS, bronze metal seems to have been much in favour with the ancients. It was chosen not only for their domestic vessels, but it was also much used for their public sculptures and medals. It is a compound, composed of from six to twelve parts of tin to one hundred of copper. It gives its name to figures and all pieces of sculpture made of it. Brass was another favourite metal, which is composed of copper and zinc. It is more fusible than copper, and not so apt to tarnish. In a pure state it is not malleable, unless when hot, and after it has been melted twice it will not bear the hammer. To render it capable of being wrought, it requires 7 lb. of lead to be put to 1 cwt. of its own material.

       The Corinthian brass of antiquity was a mixture of silver, gold, and copper. A fine kind of brass, supposed to be made by the cementation of copper plates with calamine, is, in Germany, hammered out into leaves, and is called Dutch metal in this country. It is employed in the same way as gold leaf. Brass is much used for watchworks, as well as for wire.

       68. The braziers, ladles, stewpans, saucepans, gridirons, and colanders of antiquity might generally pass for those of the English manufacture of the present day, in so far as shape is concerned. In proof of this we have placed together the following similar articles of ancient and modern pattern, in order that the reader may, at a single view, see wherein any difference that is between them, consists.

       [Illustration: Fig. 9. Modern.] [Illustration: Fig. 10. Ancient.] [Illustration: Fig. 11. Modern.] [Illustration: Fig. 12. Ancient.] [Illustration: Fig. 13. Modern.] [Illustration: Fig. 14. Ancient.] [Illustration: Fig. 15. Modern.] [Illustration: Fig. 16. Modern.] [Illustration: Fig. 17. Ancient.] [Illustration: Fig. 18. Ancient.]

       Figs. 9 and 10 are flat sauce or saute pans, the ancient one being fluted in the handle, and having at the end a ram's head. Figs. 11 and 12 are colanders, the handle of the ancient one being adorned, in the original, with carved representations of a cornucopia, a satyr, a goat, pigs, and other animals. Any display of taste in the adornment of such utensils, might seem to be useless; but when we remember how much more natural it is for us all to be careful of the beautiful and costly, than of the plain and cheap, it may even become a question in the economy of a kitchen, whether it would not, in the long run, be cheaper to have articles which displayed some tasteful ingenuity in their manufacture, than such as are so perfectly plain as to have no attractions whatever beyond their mere suitableness to the purposes for which they are made. Figs. 13 and 14 are saucepans, the ancient one being of bronze, originally cop-ied from the cabinet of M. l'Abbe Charlet, and engraved in the Antiquities of Montfaucon. Figs. 15 and 17 are gridirons, and 16 and

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       18 drippingpans. In all these utensils the resemblance between such as were in use 2,000 years ago, and those in use at the present day, is strikingly manifest.

       69. SOME OF THE ANCIENT UTENSILS represented in the above cuts, are copied from those found amid the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii. These Roman cities were, in the first century, buried beneath the lava of an eruption of Vesuvius, and continued to be lost to the world till the beginning of the last century, when a peasant, in digging for a well, gradually discovered a small temple with some statues. Little notice, however, was taken of this circumstance till 1736, when the king of Naples, desiring to erect a

       palace at Portici, caused extensive excavations to be made, when the city of Herculaneum was slowly unfolded to view. Pompeii was discovered about 1750, and being easier cleared from the lava in which it had so long been entombed, disclosed itself as it existed immediately before the catastrophe which overwhelmed it, nearly two thousand years ago. It presented, to the modern world, the perfect picture of the form and structure of an ancient Roman city. The interior of its habitations, shops, baths, theatres, and temples, were all disclosed, with many of the implements used by the workmen in their various trades, and the materials on which they were employed, when the doomed city was covered with the lavian stream.

       70. AMONGST THE MOST ESSENTIAL REQUIREMENTS of the kitchen are scales or weighing-machines for family use. These are found to have existed among the ancients, and must, at a very early age, have