With coal-fires such separate firing would be troublesome, as coal cannot be so easily kindled on requirement as wood. With our roaring, wasteful kitchen furnaces and still more wasteful cooks, the long-sustained moderate heat is not practicable without some further device. I found that, by using a ‘milk scalder,’ which is a water-bath similar to a glue-pot, but on a large scale, I could obtain Rumford’s results over a common kitchen-range with very little trouble, and no risk of baking the bottom part of the porridge. I further found that even a longer period of stewing than he prescribes is desirable. I made a hearty meal on No. 1 soup, and found it as satisfactory as any dinner of meat, potatoes, &c., of any number of courses; and, as a chemist, I assert without any hesitation, that such a meal is demonstrably of equal or superior nutritive value to an ordinary Englishman’s slice of beef diluted with potatoes. The No. 2 soup is not so satisfactory. Rumford was wrong in his estimate of the value of potatoes. In the formula for Rumford’s soup it is stated that the bread should not be cooked, but added just before serving the soup. Like everything else in his practical programmes, this was prescribed with a philosophical reason. His reasons may have been fanciful sometimes, but he never acted stupidly, as the vulgar majority of mankind usually do when they blindly follow an established custom without knowing any reason for so doing, or even attempting to discover a reason. In his essay on ‘The Pleasure of Eating, and of the Means that may be Employed for Increasing it,’ he says: ‘The pleasure enjoyed in eating depends, first, on the agreeableness of the taste of the food; and, secondly, upon its power to affect the palate. Now, there are many substances extremely cheap, by which very agreeable tastes may be given to food, particularly when the basis or nutritive substance of the food is tasteless; and the effect of any kind of palatable solid food (of meat, for instance) upon the organs of taste may be increased, almost indefinitely, by reducing the size of the particles of such food, and causing it to act upon the palate by a larger surface. And if means be used to prevent its being swallowed too soon, which may easily be done by mixing it with some hard and tasteless substance, such as crumbs of bread rendered hard by toasting, or anything else of that kind, by which a long mastication is rendered necessary, the enjoyment of eating may be greatly increased and prolonged.’ He adds that ‘the idea of occupying a person a great while, and affording him much pleasure at the same time in eating a small quantity of food, may perhaps appear ridiculous to some; but those who consider the matter attentively will perceive that it is very important. It is perhaps as much so as anything that can employ the attention of the philosopher.’