DRESSING of Meats, the preparing them for food by means of culinary fire.

The design of dressing is to loosen the compages or texture of the flesh, and dispose it for dissolution and digestion in the stomach. Flesh not being a proper food without dressing, is alleged as an argument that man was not intended by nature for a carnivorous animal.

The usual operations are roasting, boiling, and stewing.—In roasting, it is observed, meat will bear a much greater and longer heat than either in boiling or stewing; and in boiling, greater and longer than in stewing. The reason is, that roasting being performed in the open air, as the parts begin externally to warm, they extend and dilate, and so gradually let out part of the rarefied included air, by which means the internal succussions, on which the dissolution depends, are much weakened and abated. Boiling being performed in water, the pressure is greater, and consequently the succussions to lift up the weight are proportionably strong, by which means the cotion is hastened; and even in this way there are great differences; for the greater the weight of water, the sooner is the business done.

In stewing, though the heat be infinitely short of what is employed in the other ways, the operation is much more quick, because performed in a close vessel, and full; by which means the succussions are oftener repeated, and more strongly reverberated. Hence the force of Papin's digester; and hence an illustration of the operation of digestion.

Vol. VII. Part I.

Boiling, Dr Cheyne observes, draws more of the rank strong juices from meat, and leaves it less nutritive, more diluted, lighter, and easier of digestion: roasting, on the other hand, leaves it fuller of the strong nutritive juices, harder to digest, and needing more dilution. Strong, grown, and adult animal food, therefore, should be boiled, and the younger and tenderer roasted.