This most simple of culinary processes is not often performed in perfection. Boiling requires less nicety and attendance than roasting; and to skim your pot "well, and keep it really boiling (the slower the better) all the while, and to know how long is required for doing the joint, &C. comprehends almost the whole art and mystery. This however, requires a patient and perpetual vigilance, of which few persons are capable. - The cook must take care that the water really boils all the while she is cooking, or she will be deceived in the time; and she should make up a sufficient fire at first, to last all the time, without much mending or stirring. As it is coming to a boil.

There will always, from the cleanest meat and clearest water, rise a scum to the top of the pot: this proceeds partly from the foulness of the meat, and partly from the water, and must be carefully taken off as soon as it rises: if you neglect this, and suffer it to boil, the scum will fall, and stick to the meat. On this depends the appearance of all boiled things. When you have scummed well, throw in some cold water and a little salt, which will throw up the rest of the scum. The oftener it is scummed, and the cleaner the top of the water is kept, the cleaner will be the meat. If let alone, it soon boils down, and sticks to the meat*; which, instead of looking delicately white and nice, will have that coarse and filthy appearance we have too often to complain of, and the butcher and poulterer get blamed for the carelessness of the cook in not scumming her pot. Many put in milk, to make what they boil look white; but this does more harm than good: others wrap it up in a cloth; but this is needless, and better let alone; if the scum be attentively removed, it will have a colour and flavour that it never has when muffled up. It is the best way to take out all the dirt, not to defend the meat against it.

* If, unfortunately, this should happen, the cook must carefully take it off when she dishes up, either with a clean sponge or a paste-brush. .

Put jour meat into plenty of cold* water, not less than a quart to a pound, so that it may get gradually warm through before the outside gets hard: begin to reckon the time from its first coming to a boil. The old rule of 15 minutes to a pound of meat we think rather too little; for the slower it boils, the tenderer, plumper, and whiter it will be. From 20 to SO minutes to a pound will not be found too much for gentle boiling by the side of the fire; allowing more or less time, according to the thickness of the joints; always remembering, the slower it boils the better.

Meat will take,rather longer time boiling in cold than it wants in warm weather; and, if frozen, must be thawed before boiling as before roasting, by laying some time in cold water: or, two or three hours before you dress it, bringing it into a place the temperature of which is not less than fifty degrees of Fahrenheit's thermometer.

* Cooks, however, as well as doctors, disagree; for some say, that " all sorts of fresh meat should be put in when the water boils." I prefer the above method, for the reason given.