; but you can scrape off what was spilt before it has time
to burn on the shelves, and you can clean out thoroughly, and wash the
shelves with weak vinegar and water, to make them fresh and sweet. We
very often hear people say they do not like baked meat, because it
tastes of the oven."

"Yes, I have often heard them say so," said Margaret.

"Ah! This remark would not be made so frequently as it is if cooks were
careful to keep the oven _perfectly_ clean. Cleanliness is most
important in all cookery, and never more so than with regard to an
oven."

"What is that little iron slide which you pushed in when you opened the
oven, mother?" said Margaret.

"It is a ventilator, and is intended to let fresh air into the oven, and
to allow the smell of the roasting meat and the fumes which rise from it
to escape. I shut it because we are just going to put in the meat, and I
wish it to remain shut for about ten minutes, so as to make the oven
very hot till the outside is cooked."

"I know what that is for," said Mary, hurriedly: "to harden the outside,
and make a case to keep in the juice."

"Quite right, Mary," said Mrs. Herbert, smiling. "In ten minutes,
however, we will push the slide out again, and that will admit the fresh
air, slightly cool the oven, and allow the fumes to escape. Always
recollect, however, that the oven must be hot. We need a good hot oven
for roasting meat."

"Cook has put two dripping-tins here," said Margaret. "We do not want
two tins."

"Yes, we do. To use two tins is another way of preventing the taste of
the oven which is so objectionable. Usually I should use what is called
a hot-water tin for baking meat. That is a tin made for the purpose,
with a place inside for holding hot water. I shall not do so to-day,
however, because I want to show you how to manage when there is no
hot-water tin. See, I lay two or three thick sticks in the larger of the
two tins, and put the smaller tin inside the other. Then I fill the
bottom tin with hot water. I put this small stand in the uppermost tin,
and place the meat on this, and then I put the whole affair into the
oven."

"But what is the good of it all?" said Margaret.

"This is the good: when the meat has been a little while in the oven,
the fat will melt, and will fall into the dripping-tin."

"I know that," said Margaret.

"Well, then, if we were to let the meat lie in the tin, don't you think
it would get soaked in fat? Of course it would, an