This subject of roasting occupied a large amount of Count Rumford’s attention while he was in England residing in Brompton Road, and founding the Royal Institution. His efforts were directed not merely to cooking the meat effectively, but to doing so economically. Like all others who have contemplated thoughtfully the habits of Englishmen, he was shocked at the barbaric waste of fuel that everywhere prevailed in this country, even to a greater extent then than now. The first fact that necessarily presented itself to his mind was the great amount of heat that is wasted, when an ordinary joint of meat is suspended in front of an ordinary coal fire to intercept and utilise only a small fraction of its total radiation. As far as I am aware, there is no other country in Europe where such a process is indigenous. I say ‘indigenous,’ because there certainly are hotels where this or any other English extravagance is perpetrated to please Englishmen who choose to pay for it. What is usually called roast meat in countries not inhabited by English-speaking people, is what we should call ‘baked meat,’ the very name of which sets all the gastronomic bristles of an orthodox Englishman in a position of perpendicularity. I have a theory of my own respecting the origin of this prejudice. Within the recollection of many still living, the great middle class of Englishmen lived in town; their sitting-rooms were back parlours behind their shops, or factories, or warehouses; their drawing-rooms were on the first-floor, and kitchens in the basement. They kept one general servant of the ‘Marchioness’ type. The corresponding class now live in suburban villas, keep cook, housemaid, and parlour-maid, besides the gardener and his boy, and they dine at supper-time. In the days of the one marchioness and the basement kitchen, these citizens ‘of credit and renown’ dined at dinner-time, and were in the habit of placing a three-legged open iron triangle in a brown earthenware dish, then spreading a stratum of peeled potatoes on said dish, and a joint of meat above, on the open triangular support. This edifice was carried by the marchioness to the bakehouse round the corner at about 11 A.M., and brought back steaming and savoury at 1 P.M. This was especially the case on Sundays; but there were exceptions, as when, for example, the condition of the mistress’s wardrobe offered no particular motive for going to church, and she stayed at home and roasted the Sunday dinner. The experience thus obtained demonstrated a material difference between the flavour of the roasted and the baked meat very decidedly in favour of the home roasted. Why?