Baking, or Oven Cookery

The improved construction of the ovens connected with all modern cooking stoves, gives great facility at the present day for home baking, even in very small establishments; and without this convenience it is impossible for justice to be done to the person who conducts the cookery; as many and great disadvantages attend the sending to a public oven; and it is very discouraging to a servant who has prepared her dishes with nicety and skill, to have them injured by the negligence of other persons. One of the best modes of cooking with which we are acquainted is by means of a jar, resembling in form that shown above, well pasted down, and covered with a fold of thick paper, and then placed in a gentle oven. Rice is most excellent when thus slowly baked with a certain proportion of liquid, either by itself, or mingled with meat, fish, or fruit; but we must reserve for another volume particulars of this little system of slow oven-cookery, in which for some years past we have had numberless experiments made with almost uniform success: it is especially suited to invalids, from preserving the entire amount of nourishment contained in the articles of food dressed by it; and it is to their use that we hope to appropriate it.