The Sun.
London, England, 1858-09-10 00:00:00

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THE SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 10, 1858.

CAPTAIN GRANT'S COOKING.

For want of a better definition, man has been
described as a cooking animal. :If we were to judge
of his right to such a designation by the exploits of
our soldiers in the Crimea, our hardiest heroes would
have but little title to the distinctive characteristic
of humanity. Captain Grant has devoted himself
to the improvement of the soldier in a matter which
concerns so intimately his health, as well as his
comfort, with all the enthusiasm of a Soyer.
We have now before us a return made to the
House of Lords last session, of the proceedings of
two Committees and of a correspondence, on the
merits of Captain Grant's cooking apparatus.
The truth is, that man—notwithstanding the defi-
nition above referred to—is by no means a cooking
animal by nature, any more than he is a clothing
one. Food is, if anything, more important than
clothes or shelter, and yet it has, in our country,
been infinitely less regarded. While science and
art have each exhausted all their resources in
the adornment and preparation of textile fabrics—
while the builder and architect have exerted all
the mathematical and poetical powers of the human
intellect in the erection of the triumphs of their art
—the preparation of the materials which are to
support and to build up the marvellous structure of
man's body has been left almost to the light of
nature.
To make a good cook requires an education as
careful as that necessary to make either a good tailor
or a good builder. This we found to our cost in the
Crimea. Our fine stalwart Guards were sent down
into the trenches to dig in the midst of cold and
damp. They wore away their muscles by their
work ; they spent the heat of their bodies in resisting
the cold and damp from without. Cold and hungry
they returned home, to show that every man was his
own cook. They required meat and bread to supply
the bone and muscle they had worn away. They
required fat and fatty matter to keep their hearts in
motion and support the inner fire by which their
life was kept within them. But they wanted not
only the material with which to cook their food,
but the art to cook it when the fuel was found.
They were not cooks by nature, and they had never
been _ taught. They had plenty of food, but not
being able to cook it, their camp was strewed with
portionS of uncooked salt meat and partially roasted
coffee. The grenadier went back again, hungry
and exhausted, to his work. He bad stored up no
internal fuel either to resist the cold without, or
keep up the vital action within. The material
being poorly supplied, work could only be done at
the expense of fibres already diminished. Bad
cooking, therefore, led to disease, and disease to
death. The Russian, in self-defence, was doing all
that villanous gunpowder, with showers of iron
and lead, could accomplish, to annihilate these bold
invaders. Yet all that he could do was not a tithe
part so effectual as the Englishman's ignorance of
cookery. What has been described as the position
of the Guardsman, applied almost equally to every
part of the British army.
The man who strives to remedy so flagrant an evil
is no small benefactor to the army ; and not to the
army alone, but to the nation at large, seating
aside all questions as to humanity and the
worth of human life, In a mere economical point
of view a soldier is a very costly machine. His
education is costly, and tune as well as money
must be exhausted before his loss can be supplied. If
a small fraction of the money spent in endeavouring
to secure improvements in the destructive imple-
ments of war was bestowed upon the sanitary con-
dition of barracks and camps, and proper methods
of cooking, half the number of soldiers lost in
every campaign might be saved.
Captain Grant's cooking apparatus strives to
effect economy of fuel, with variety in the modes of
cooking. This variety, by means of which roast
and boiled, baked and stewed, can be prepared at
the same time, is of considerable importance. The
defective health and the increased ratio of mortality
of the soldier, even when at home and free from ac-
tive service, as compared with his fellow-citizens,
neither so well clothed nor so abundantly fed, has
been imputed, among other causes, to his constant
invariable diet of boiled and stewed meat. The
same quantity of fuel, and even a less, than is now
required in an ordinary kitchen to boil a few sauce-
pans or kettles of meat, is made, by a skilful
arrangement of Captain Grant's cooking apparatus,
to boil, stew, fry, roast, or bake. The fuel is placed
in a furnace, from which a flue runs a short dis-
tance horizontally. This flue is then carried
upwards around an oven before entering what may
be called the chimney. The whole upper surface
of the horizontal flue is covered with iron plates, so
that boilers of galvanised iron can be arranged side
by side. In these boilers meat can be stewed or
boiled; puddings, such as, for instance, a meat
pudding for each man, can be boiled, while the
steam arising from the lower part of the boilers
is economised so as to stew the potatoes in an upper
compartment. The heat passing along the hori-
zontal flue which has been boiling and stewing,
instead of being allowed to dissipate Itself in the
chimney, is found sufficiently powerful to give
the requisite heat to a wrought iron oven, placed
vertically under the chimney, so as to abstract all
the heat of the flue in its passage upwards by proper
ventilation. This oven bakes the meat placed in it
without flavouring it, the meat so baked being
undistinguishable from that roasted in the ordinary
manner. A hot plate being removed from above
the horizontal flue, a gridiron or fryingpan may be
substituted for one of the boilers.

We have seen a couple of men cooking for about
a thousand soldiers, stews, boiled meat, potatoes,
puddings, and baked meats, all at one time, in
m one of Captain Grant's apparatuses. The
kitchen was a model of neatness and cleanliness ; it
was neither uncomfortably hot, nor yet were you
blinded by smoke and steam, as you would have
been in an ordinary soldiers' kitchen. Here, then,
we have improved means of cookery ; and like most
real improvements, it is accompanied by economy in
first cost and also for maintenance.

The ordinary boiling apparatus now in use in the
soldiers' kitchens, which admits of no variety in
cooking, consumes one and one-third pound of fuel
per day for the three meals cooked for each man.
When Captain Grant's apparatus is used for 1,000
men it only consumes 5001bs. of fuel to do the same
work. In the most unfavourable ciremnstances,
when the apparatus constructed for 1,000 men is
used only to cook for 50 men, icrequires only 401bs.
of firing. Thus, under the most favourable condi-
tions for the large apparatus, there was a saving of
five-sixths of a pound of fuel, and under the least,
a saving of one-third of a pound of fuel, for each
man. From the estimates it appears that in the
construction of one of Captain Grant's improved
apparatuses for 500 men there would be a saving
£2O 10s, for its cost and erection as compared with
the old system ; it would last much longer, and
only require half as much to keep it in repair. And
whereas the old apparatus could only be properly
repaired in: eight or ten days, when a general
repair was necessary, Captain Grant's can be
thoroughly renovated in one night, without throw-
ing the apparatus out of work.
In addition to all these advantages, the new ap-
paratus has fewer fires to be attended to ; it affords
greater facility for cleaning the cook-house and
boilers ; the temperatur of the kitchen is lower ;
there is more clear space, and consequently more
room, for the distribution of the meals. So much
for home cookery for the soldier. For camp pur-
poses, Captain Grant has made such a modification
of his apparatus as not only .to make it portable, but
also to utilise it for purposes of strategy. He con-
verts it, in fact, into a very serviceable pontoon.
Seeing what can be done to improve the apparatus
for cooking, the Military Committee appointed to
report' on its merits have turned their attention to
the cooks. They suggest that all recruits should be
regularly instructed in barrack cooking in some or-
ganised manner ; and that no recruit be allowed to
cook for a room until he shall have passed the ne-
cessary training. The committee tell us just what
one would suppose, that as men are not born cooks,
the soldiers' meals are 'not unfrequently spoiled,
because the recruit is left to mother wit and the
light of nature to acquire the art of cookery.
In the Crimea our Jack Tars suffered less than
the soldier, though similarly worked and exposed,
because every man-of-war's man is by education
cook and tailor to the full extent of his wants.
Give him food, and he knows how to render it both

palateable and digestible ; supply him with the
materials for clothing, and he is sufficiently skilled
to adapt them to his comfort and protection.
Proper apparatus for cooking, and the skill to use
it aright, is a subject of vital importance for the
well-being of the army. By a little attention
bestowed upon these, the comfort and efficiency of
the British soldier might be more than doubled.—
Daily' News.

Yesterday upwards of 50 sick and wounded troops
most of wh`om have recently, been. invalided home
from India, left St. Mary's invalid establishment,
Chatham, for their homes, the authorities. at Chel-
seaowing
Hospital having ordered their. discharge,
to their unfitness for further service.
Fifteen gunners of the 14th battalion Royal Ar-
tillery, and five drivers from the detachment of
field batteries; in charge of a medical officer, left
Woolwich garrison on Wednesday, and embarked
on board the Walter Morn. ce, at Gravesend, for
Madras; and 20 non-commissioned officers and men
of the 14th battalion also left Woolwich the same
day, and took passage on.
.board the Sardinia for
Bombay. A quantity of military clothing was like-
wise shipped on board the Sardinia from Woolwich
Arsenal. The freightship Magna Bona also shipped
military clothing for the troop in Melbourne.