Dr. Letheby gives the following admirable directions for choosing meat of all kinds.

"Good meat has the following characteristics: -

"I. It is neither of a pale pink colour, nor of a deep purple tint, for the former is a sign of disease, and the latter indicates that the animal has not been slaughtered, but has died with the blood in it, or has suffered from acute fever.

"2. It has a marbled appearance from the ramifications of little veins of fat among the muscles.

* Bacon suffers less waste than fresh meat in cooking, and goes further as food. Good bacon should not lose more than from to to 15 per cent, in cooking.

The Chine is the neck whole.

"3. It should be firm and elastic to the touch, and scarcely moisten the fingers - bad meat being wet and sodden and flabby, with the fat looking like jelly or wet parchment.

"4. It should have little or no odour, and the odour should not be disagreeable; diseased meat has a sickly cadaverous smell, and sometimes a smell of physic.

"5. It should not shrink or waste much in cooking.

"6. It should not run to water nor become very wet on standing for a day or two, but should on the contrary dry upon the surface.

"7. When dried at a temperature of 212° or thereabouts, it should not lose more than 70 to 74 per cent, of its weight, whereas bad meat will often lose as much as 80 per cent." - Dr. Letheby's Lectures on Food, p. 235.

The parasitic animals which infest butcher's meat are destroyed if the meat be thoroughly dressed and raised, during the cooking, to a temperature of 212°.

Roast meat should be frequently basted with its own dripping. Meat can scarcely be basted too much.

Boiled meat if cooked in cold water - i.e., put into cold water and raised gradually to boiling point - imparts its juices to the water, and supplies both soup and meat. If plunged into boiling water to shut in the juices the pot liquor will be worthless. Stewing is very slow boiling. Broiling is roasting over the fire instead of in front of it. Frying is boiling in boiling fat.

For every mode of cooking animal food, see Warne's "Model Cookery".

We subjoin, however, a few words from Dr. Lyon Playfair on the science of boiling.

"In boiling meat for soup, cold water should be used at first, so as to extract as much of the nutrient juices as possible, and the heat be raised gradually. But if the meat be wanted in a boiled state for itself, and not for its soup, then it should be plunged at once into boiling water, and kept boiling for a few minutes, so that all the outer albumen may be coagulated, in order to imprison the sapid and nutritive juices; then cold water should be added till the temperature is reduced to 1600, at which it should be kept till the cooking is completed, because that heat is necessary for the coagulation of the colouring matter of the blood. In all cases no more heat than is sufficient should be employed in cooking. Thus, in making soup, all the fire in the world will not make the water hotter than its boiling temperature, at which point it can be retained by a very moderate expenditure of fuel. Violent ebullition, such as we see cooks often practise, while it does no good, does much harm, not only by wasting coal, but also by carrying off in the steam much of the aromatic and volatile ingredients of the food".

Meat should be wiped with a dry clean cloth as soon as it comes from the butcher's; fly-blows, if found in it, cut out, and in loins the long pipe that runs by the bone should be taken out, as it soon taints; the kernels also should be removed from beef. Never receive bruised joints.

Meat will keep good for a long time in cold weather, and if frozen through may be kept for months. Frozen meat must be thawed before it contains a great deal of carbonaceous matter, and should therefore be used with eggs, veal, beans, and peas, which are rich in nitrogen, is cooked by plunging it into cold water, or placing it before the fire before setting it down to roast. It will never be dressed through if this precaution is not taken, not even when twice cooked.

Pepper is a preventative of decay in a degree; it is well, therefore, to pepper hung joints.

Powdered charcoal is still more remarkable in its effect. It will not only keep the meat over which it is sprinkled good, but it will remove the taint from already decayed flesh.

A piece of charcoal boiled in the water with "high" meat or fowls, will render it or them quite sweet. A piece of charcoal, or powdered charcoal, should be kept in every larder. Hams, after being smoked, may be kept any length of time packed in powdered charcoal.

Charcoal powder also darkens and improves the flowers of the dahlia, rose, etc., etc.

The taint of meat may also be removed by washing it with pyrolig. ncous acid (i.e., vinegar distilled from wood), which like charcoal combines with the putrescent particles and neutralizes their offensive smell and taste.

Tough meat may be made more tender by soaking it in vinegar and water. Three quarts of water mixed with three-quarters of a pint of vinegar, will suffice to steep a piece of beef weighing ten pounds. Soak it for six or seven hours.

Most Profitable Joints For Family Use

The leg of mutton is the most profitable joint, containing most solid meat. The neck is an extravagant joint, half the weight consisting of bone and fat. The shoulder has also much waste in bone. The breast does well for kitchen dinner, nicely stuffed; it is much cheaper than the other joints.

Sirloins and ribs of beef are very extravagant joints, from the weight of bone. The roasting side of the round part of the buttock, and the part called "the topside," are the most profitable for family eating. The mouse buttock is used for stewing; shin is used for soup or stewing.

The usual quantity of butchers meat consumed in a family is on an average three-quarters of a pound a day for each person; but when the family consists of ladies and children, half a pound per day is about the quantity consumed one with another, independent of hams, bacon, poultry, fish and game.