Page:An Encyclopædia of Cottage, Farm, and Villa Architecture and Furniture.djvu/723

 FINISHING OF COUNTRY INNS. 699 live eels, and cisterns for feeding oysters, and also for crawfish. In summer, the fish is kept on a table under a case of fine ivirecloth, that it may be seen, for the purpose of selection, by guests, without uncovering it to admit the flies. Cold meat, and also raw meat for steaks and chops are covered in a similar manner in some of the London larders. The vegetable larder, as we have already observed, § 737, ought, if convenient, to be near the ice- house. In addition to larders for preserving these different kinds of prodsions, there ought also to be a cellar or other place for intenerating such meat as may be required to be dressed before it has hung the usual time. As coating poultry or butcher's meat with yeast, or rub- bing it over with, or immersing it in, charcoal, tends to freshen it when it has been kept too long, so burying it in earth, by accelerating putrefaction, serves to render it tender. It is well known, that a fowl of any kind, not many hours killed, if buried five or six hours in common garden soil, becomes as tender as if it had been kept above ground two or three days. Fowls newly killed, and dressed before they are cold (savagelike though the practice is), are always perfectly tender ; as are also all the internal parts of animals. Hanging fowls or meat in the shade of a fig tree, or any tree of the same natural order, is also found to make them tender. Nettles belong to the same natural order ; and it is said that slices of meat, such as beefsteaks, &c., rubbed over with nettle leaves, or laid on and covered with them, will become quite tender in a few hours. 1462. The Fittings-np of the Cellars of Inns have nothing peculiar. Cast-iron bins for wines have been employed in London, to save room ; but, as they are not so durable as brick or stone, they are not approved of in cases where there is abundance of space. It is also said that the effect which the changes of temperature produce upon iron has some influence on the state of port wine stored in iron bins, it being well known that this wine is more liable to be rendered muddy by cold than any other. 1463. The Cellar Furniture for oh 7?t7i includes a machine for racking wine from one cask to another, of which there are various sorts ; one, recently invented by ]Ir. Hilton, is figured and described in the Trans, of the Soc of Arts, vol. xlviii. p. 70: and a machine for bottling wine ; one of which has been invented by Mr. Masterman of London, by which a number of bottles may be filled at tlie same time, and this with such rapidity, that six dozen of common quart bottles may be filled in ten minutes. The same gentleman has also invented a machine for corking five or six bottles at i time ; so that, in extensive concerns, the business of bottling and corking may be reduced to a tenth part of the usual labour. Both machines cost very little ; they will be found figured and described in the Bepertory of Arts, new series, vol. i. ; and the bot- tling-machine, which is a very beautiful and effective apparatus, may be seen in operation in the extensive wine vaults of Carbonell and Company, Regent Street, London. The common bottling-machine we have already given, § 1324, fig. 1189. An improved mode of preserving beer from souring has been invented by our correspondent, Mr. Mallet of Dublin, which is well deserving the attention of those who know what it is to drink table beer charged with carbonic acid gas. By IMr. Mallet's apparatus the external air is not only completely excluded, but the beer may be impregnated with gas, as in the manufacture of soda water. The cost is little more than that of the patent vent peg. (See Mech. Mag. vol. xv. p. 264.) 1464. A Washing and Wringing Machine for a farm house has been already given; and we shall now recommend one for an inn, which is in use in the Derbyshire Infirmary and in other establishments. This machine may either be turned by manual labour, by a horse, or by steam ; and as, in a large inn, a steam-engine of one-horse power might always be combined with the steam apparatus for other purposes, it might be em- ployed for driving different kinds of machinery, such as a washing-machine, a churn, a straw-cutter, oat-bruiser, &c. It has been remarked to us by a correspondent, who has paid great attention to the subject of domestic economy, that the machine we are about to describe is the only one he ever saw which did no injury to liuen. It was adapted