and has been broiled with a learned and almost
unerring instinct. It requires no effort of
digestion, it melts in the mouth like a peach,
passes at once into the blood, and goes straight
to recruit the heart. It is a sort of meat fruit,
and merely requires the soft pressure of the
lips. Broiling, to tell the truth however,
requires no common mind. To broil, is to
perform an operation which is the result of
centuries of experience acquired by a nation that
relishes, always did relish, and probably always
will relish, broils. It requires cleanliness,
watchfulness, patience, profound knowledge of great
chemical laws, a quick eye, and a swift hand.
The Homeric heroes are supposed to have
lived on broils, and this branch of cooking is
deserving of the utmost respect.

A young cook should be always informed
that it takes years to learn how to broil a rump
steak; for a thousand impish difficulties surround
the broiler, and do their worst to spoil the
dainty morsel, and prevent its reaching the
expectant jaws. If the gridiron be not bright as
silver, and clean between the bars, the meat will
suffer. If the bars be not rubbed with suet
they will print themselves on the steak. If
the fire be not bright and clear, there is no hope
for the broiler. If the broil be hurried, it will
be smoked or burnt. If the gridiron be
overheated before the steak is put on it, it will
scorch the steak. If the gridiron be cold, the
part of the meat covered by the bars will be
underdone. If the gridiron be not kept slanting,
the constant flare and smoke, from the fat
streaming into the fire, will spoil the steak. If
no salt be sprinkled on the fire, the meat will
very likely taste of brimstone, which the salt
should exorcise.

Few people seem to know that rump steaks
are not at their best, except from October to
April. It is only in the colder months that they
can be taken from meat hung at least four days
to make it tender. When fresh they are mere
fibrous masses of unconquerable gristly fibre.
A good steak often turned to prevent burning,
and to keep the gravy at the centre, takes ten
minutes to broil. It should be eaten with a
table-spoonful of warmed catsup, and a little
finely minced shalot.

Mutton, says the eccentric Dr. Kitchener,
requires a brisk fierce fire, quick and clear; but
beef, a large sound one. To judge from Robert
May's Accomplisht Cook (1665), written five
years after the Restoration by a man who had
been apprenticed to the chefs at the Grocers'
Hall and Star Chamber, and had afterwards
officiated in Lady Dormer's kitchen, bastings and
dredgings were thought of supreme importance
in the reign of Charles the Second. May
enumerates seven forms of dredgings, and six
of bastings, some, perhaps, worthy of
preservation. The dredgings are: 1. Flour mixed
with grated bread; 2. Sweet herbs dried and
powdered, mixed with bread-crumbs; 3. Lemon-
peel pounded, or orange-peel mixed with flour;
4. Powdered sugar mixed with pounded
cinnamon, flour, or grated bread; 5. Fennel seeds,

coriander, cinnamon, and sugar finely beaten,
and mixed with grated bread or flour; 6. For
young pigs, grated bread or flour mixed with
beaten nutmeg, ginger, pepper, sugar, and yolks
of eggs; 7. Sugar, bread, and salt mixed. For
bastings: 1. Fresh butter; 2. Chopped suet;
3. Minced sweet herbs, butter, and claret
(especially for mutton and lamb); 4. Water and salt.
5. Cream and melted butter (especially for
flayed pig); 6. Yolks of eggs, grated biscuit,
and juice of oranges.

The old rule of roasting and boiling is about
twenty minutes to the pound; fifteen minutes
is scarcely enough, especially in cold weather,
in a draughty kitchen, or at a slack fire. The
fire for roasting should burn up gradually, and
not attain its full power until the joint is
approaching perfection. Boiled meat cannot boil
too slowly. Boiling wastes less of the meat than
roasting. Beef, by boiling, loses twenty-six and
a half per cent; by baking, thirty; by roasting,
thirty-two per cent; boiling is also, though
less savoury, a more economical way of cooking,
as the water used receives the gelatine of
the meat and makes an excellent basis for
soup, which it is mad extravagance to throw
away. The charm of a roast joint is the beautiful
pale-brown colour. The sign of a roast
joint being thoroughly done (saturated with
heat) is when the steam rising from it draws
towards the fire.

In the old cocked-hat times, when an inn
kitchen was the traveller's sweetest refuge, and
the sight of the odorous joint revolving
majestically on the spit was one of the most refreshing
of landscapes—in those distant ages, when the
postilion's whip sounded frequently at the inn
door, and the creaking of the inn sign was tired
nature's most grateful lullaby—the red-faced
choleric cook made great to-do with her steel
spits and pewter plates. Those were hard
times for the kitchen wenches, the scullions,
and the turnspit dogs, the latter of whom used
often to hide when they saw the meat arrive at
the kitchen door. The jack had to be scoured,
oiled, wiped, and kept covered up. It was in
those days that Swift, in his droll bitter way,
advised the cook to carefully leave the winders
on whilst the jack was going round, in order that
they might fly off and knock out the brains of
half a dozen of those idle, thievish, chattering
footmen who were always clustering round the
dripping-pan.

It was Swift who also enriched our literature
with a rhyming recipe to roast mutton. It is a
pleasant banter on the stultifying love verses
and pastoral songs of Queen Anne's time:

     Gently stir and blow the fire,
         Lay the mutton down to roast,
     Dress it quickly, I desire,
       In the dripping put a toast
     That I hunger may remove—
       Mutton is the meat I love.

     On the dresser see it lie,
       Oh! the charming white and red,
     Finer meat ne'er met the eye,
       On the sweetest grass it fed.