Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/28

18 my office with, her daughter; the latter was very skeptical as to success in working my apparatus; the oven was, however, bought, and has been in use during the past summer; her testimony in regard to it is as follows:

I am glad to tell you that I like the Aladdin oven very much indeed. My dinners for the last three months have been cooked in it with success and economy, and the kitchen never overheated. It saves material, fuel, and labor, as well as heat. It is an immense comfort as well as economy. It bakes bread and cake nicely, and we have only used coal for laundry purposes. I wish it could be produced at a cheaper rate, though I would not lose mine for twice its price.

Another certificate I may venture to give from another lady who has tried the apparatus, as follows:

1. In respect to economy in the use of material for food: All remnants of food can be served again without drying or losing any of the fresh flavor. With any skill, therefore, "made dishes can be produced until the first material is used up.

2. In respect to comfort of the kitchen: It goes without saying that a room in which only a lamp is burning is cooler than one with a fire in an iron stove.

3. The cook says it is much less work; but I find they sometimes from force of habit throw the fuel into the stove and cook there rather than take the trouble to use the oven.

Lastly, general conclusions: It is of inestimable value in warm weather, and saves two hods of coal a day when it is used half the day. For an apartment-house or in small kitchens it will be a great boon. With an intelligent, care-loving woman it will go much further and do better work, of course, than with the ordinary cook, though it is so simple that any one can use it.

In a third letter, the testimony is as follows:

My general conclusions in regard to health and appetizing conditions are: Bread from the oven is much more wholesome than from the range, because of the slow, even, and thorough baking. Meats are more wholesome, because the juices are entirely preserved and the fats not overdone. The greatest advantage, perhaps, is the possibility of so regulating the temperature as to preserve fine and delicate flavors at the same time that the most wholesome results are secured.

Finally, I am permitted to give the following extract from a note from Mrs. Ellen H. Richards, whose excellent work in industrial and household chemistry is doubtless well known to you.

I submitted the early types of my oven to an investigation which was conducted under her direction by Miss Marion Talbot, whose thoroughly scientific report upon the diffusion of heat and other matters encouraged me to go on, and was wholly consistent with my own experiments and with all the evidence which I have since obtained. This latter report is too long for inclusion in the present address. Mrs. Richards's present statement is as follows:

It seems to me that the mission of the Oven and Cooker is in the ideal life of the twentieth century, as shown by Bellamy. That is, when the people of the middle classes, as we know them now, shall pay attention to the question of food,