Cu′li-na-ry-boil′er.
A cookingvessel for holding water in which victuals are boiled.
Its form and appurtenances are adapted to the customary uses of peoples, — to be swung over a fire, stand on a hearth, rest on the bars of a grate, set within a pot-hole of a stove.
In Fig. 1542, the kettle is placed in an openbottomed shell of similar shape, but of size sufficient to allow the caloric current circulation between them.
A valve in the kettle-lid allows escape of steam beneath the lid of the shell.
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Another form has a duct for leading off steam and effluvia.
The lid has a hinged portion with a spout which conducts the steam to a pipe which leads it to the fire-chamber.
The boilers of nations unacquainted with metal or pottery were usually plaited vessels of roots or rushes so closely worked as to be water-proof, or treated with some water-resisting substance.
The latter varied with different nations and tribes, according to the materials at hand.
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Boiler. |
Some of the
North American Indians made their boilers of long, tough roots wound in plies around a center, and shaped like an inverted beehive.
The water in all such vessels was heated by the introduction of hot stones from a fire kindled on the ground in the vicinity.
“If the Scythians do not happen to possess a caldron, they make the animal's paunch hold the flesh, and, pouring in at the same time a little water, lay the bones under and light them . . . . . By this plan your ox is made to boil himself.” —
Herodotus, IV. 61.
The
Dacotah Indians sometimes boil animals in their own skins, taking the skin off whole, suspending it at the four corners, and making use of boilingstones as usual.
The plan was commonly used in the stone age of
Europe, and, no doubt, of other regions.
The “boiling-stones” are familiar objects with archaeologists, and are found with flint tools and weapons.
Several tribes of Polynesia and Oceanica have been discovered entirely destitute of any knowledge of boiling water.
It occasioned the most intense wonder.
Says
Wallis: —
“It is impossible to describe the astonishment expressed by the
Society Islanders when they saw
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the gunner dress his pork and poultry by boiling them in a pot. Having no vessel that would bear the fire, they had no idea of hot water.”
Captain Cook says they had but two modes of cooking, — broiling and baking.
