Bake
The chemist who will tell us what is the precise difference between baking and roasting will confer a benefit on mankind. We all see, or fancy that we see, a difference in the results; but what it is nobody has yet been able to define. The difference in the process is clear enough. In roasting, the meat is swinging or turning in free air before a bright fire. In baking, the meat is motionless in a confined space, and whatever heat comes to it is dark. The degrees of heat as marked by the thermometer may be the same in either case. Is there any difference in taste due to the fact that in the one case the rays of heat are bright and act in a free current of air, while in the other the rays Bakeweli Pudding of heat are dark and act upon a surface from which currents of air are excluded? If chemists were practical, they would work out this problem, which is of more interest to mankind than all their researches into the nature of elementary nothings with names longer than the titles of a Spanish grandee.
It will be observed that baking is here understood in a peculiar sense. By rights, we can speak of baking in the sun, or of baking anything before a clear fire. In common parlance, however, to bake meat is to put it on a bakingdish into a closed oven. A good oven can be made out of a common saucepan. This is an important point for those who are interested in impromptu cookery-for the campaigner who wishes to roast his game at a doubtful firefor the kitchenmaid who is suddenly called upon for a nice hot supper when the fire has gone down. Rub your bird with butter, and put it with more butter into a good copperpan on the doubtful fire. The pan becomes, when tight closed, a small oven, which can be occasionally opened to give the bird a turn and a baste. Such a pan has many and many a time baked a partridge in twenty minutes, a woodcock in fifteen; and no one has guessed that it has not been roasted before a brilliant fire.
BAKEWELL PUDDING is the glory of Derbyshire. One might have expected some miracle of excellence for the palate from the ducal residence of Chatsworth, with all its fame and its splendour, and the highest fountain jet in the world. But, although a Duchess of Devonshire once kissed a butcher, the great house of Cavendish has done nothing for our tables which can compare with the humble achievement of some unknown genius in the small town of Bakewell, nigh to the prodigious Chatsworth. Line a pie-dish with a light paste. Place on this a thickish layer of any preserved fruit from the most common to the most refined-let us say peaches or apricots. The Banting Bakewellians are in the habit of intermingling this with candied citron or orange-peel cut into thin stripes-a part of the ceremony which may be safely omitted. Make a custard of six yolks and three whites of eggs, from four to five ounces of clarified butter, six ounces of sifted sugar, and three spoonfuls of what the Bakewellians call lemonbrandy-that is, brandy which has been flavoured by long maceration with the zest of lemons. A little of the zest of a lemon may be used instead, or any other flavour that may be preferred. Pour the custard over and among the apricot jam, and bake the pudding in a moderate oven for three-quarters of an hour.