Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/29

Rh and when the present kitchen and cook shall be abolished; when in each section we can buy a chicken ready dressed for the oven, a fish all washed and stuffed; when we can get bread and pastry such as we like; in short, when we have places like the Women's Exchange on Boylston Street, in each ward or village—then we shall use the Aladdin Oven, to dispense with kitchen and cook, but until then it will come into use only as an accessory, and especially in summer.

Unskilled hands can get much better work out of it than out of an ordinary range, chiefly because it can not be overheated, and things can not be burned to a crisp.

Our people need to learn what is to them a new art, the delicate flavoring which is brought out only by time—that is, by slow cooking.

When a stew deliciously flavored is to people better than crisp beef, then the oven will go; but the majority of our people are still barbarians in taste, and it will not do to claim too much.

I am sure that the conditions of slow cooking are very favorable to ease of digestion, and that the digestibility of many things is very much increased.

I am sure that economy lies in the use of material which is much less expensive, but here again we must learn to like the result.

In summer the saving of fuel is very great; in winter most people need the fire often the kitchen is the only fire.

Educated housekeepers with their own hands must work it up. Servants will not learn anything new unless working with the mistress.

I believe the idea is destined to give a much-needed relief to multitudes of over-worked women, just as soon as they can be convinced of the possibility of relief.

I may venture to subscribe myself, especially in this presence, by the use of the same words which I once adopted as a motto in my treatise on the "Missing Science of Cooking." I am— 2em



ERMIT me to begin my address by a reminiscence of the origin of this Association, which has haunted me from the moment when you did me the honor to make me your president. It was in July, 1871, when, as we were leaving the Academy of Sciences, Wurtz, taking me by the arm, in his friendly way, said: "Come to my house tomorrow evening; I wish to talk with a few of my friends concerning a scheme which I should be very glad to see carried out." MM. Delaunay, Claude Bernard, Decaisne, and I met at Wurtz's house in the rue Saint-Guillaume on Tuesday evening, and held what we may call the first meeting of the Association. As the last survivor of the company I can not refrain from recalling that intimate interview at which our 