"Give me," Says the Englishman, "a good cut of a well-cooked joint, with a nicely boiled potato, and a fresh vegetable, and I will ask for nothing more." Now, it must be admitted, that honest slices of meat constitute the favorite dinner of a Briton. Go into a Club dining-room, or into any large London tavern such as "Simpson's," "The Rainbow," etc., etc, and you will find two-thirds of the men assembled there dining " off the joint." And verily the well roasted haunch or saddle of mutton, the sirloin or round of beef, the fillet of veal, and the loin or leg of pork, are dishes peculiar to England, of which we may well boast. Our artistic neighbours across the channel are wont to sneer at our love of great joints, which they fail to cook as well as we do, for although in deference to the insular taste "ross biff" frequently figures in a Parisian menu, I think that men are unanimous in saying that it never comes up to the home-fed, home-served sirloin.

Our penchant for solid food follows us withersoever we wander away from home, and we find John Bull in India as fond of his beef and mutton, as he was when "a humble cottager in Britain." He sighs for a Southdown saddle or a Scotch sirloin, and is apt to turn away sorrowfully from the meagre travesty of a joint, which, after much trouble, the sharer of his joys and sorrows contrives to place before him.

Now, although a vast quantity of wretched meat is sold in the Indian market, I think that people who are willing to pay a good price, and whose servants are not unusually dishonest, can generally get fair beef and mutton at the large stations of this Presidency. A really bad servant will, of course, cheat you with greater cruelty in buying your meat than in anything. At some places the beef is better than the mutton, and vice versa, but I think that, if not haggled with over his prices, a butcher is generally to be found who can supply you with eatable meat. Owing to the calamity which befell us in 1877, and the two previous seasons of scarcity, our market has, for the past few years, been hardly as well supplied as it formerly was; nevertheless, good meat is to be got.

The comparative scarcity, however, of eatable meat is in a great measure due to ourselves. If the butchers were certain of sales at remunerative prices, they would produce a far better article than they do, but when people grumble at an extra anna charged on a seer of well-fed meat, you can scarcely expect much improvement. The expenses attending sheep-feeding are pretty well proved by the statistics of the old-established mutton clubs in the mofussil. The members, it is true, get capital meat, but it costs them, first and last, very nearly what it would in England. Native graziers can hardly be expected to turn out equally good mutton at a cheaper rate.

Setting aside the joints that you occasionally get when a stall-fed ox has been slaughtered, or a gram-fed sheep cut up; and without considering the exceptionally good meat of mutton clubs, it is the duty of the chronicler of these "jottings" to treat of the average produce of the country, and to endeavour to provide his readers with a few useful hints as to the cookery thereof. Let us therefore take the ordinary joint of beef or of mutton which Ramasamy brings daily from bazar for "Master and Mrs. only":- the diminutive sirloin, the ribs scarcely larger than the loin chops of a Leicestershire sheep, the three-and-a-half pound leg of mutton, or the wizen loinlet, - and let us assume that the meat, though small, is fairly good, - what shall we do with it?

In a country where it is impossible to keep cooked meat, the fact of a joint being small, need hardly be considered a drawback, but we have before us a good deal of bone in proportion to the meat, and very little fat. I say boldly that plainly toasting such a fragment is a mistake. Unless the joint be of a fair size, and above the average as to fat like the saddle, or the specially fine sirloin we buy for a dinner party, I would never roast it. The morsel can ill afford to lose the little gravy it possesses which the stab of the spit is bound to draw, and which we rarely see sent to table, for Ramasamy appreciates it as an adjunct to his curry.

The only way to cook little joints, such as those I have indicated, is to braise them. You thus obtain all the nourishment the meat can give, and a tasty and tender dish into the bargain. This admirable method of cookery is far too rarely adopted : so for the benefit of those who do not understand the process, I had better mention that braising consists in placing meat in a closed pan, with some made-gravy or stock round it, vegetables cut up, and a judicious allowance of salt and pepper. In this the meat is very slowly simmered, whilst it is browned externally by live coals placed on the braising-pan lid. There is thus heat from above and below the pan, and the joint is cooked in its own gravy, while it derives additional flavour from the vegetables, etc., associated with it.

To braise a little Indian joint successfully, you must first bone it, then trim it, tie it with a string into a neat shape, give it a dust of salt and pepper, and put it on one side, whilst you make the best broth you can from the bones you cut out, and the trimmings. This should occupy the cook all morning. Having obtained all you can from the bones, strain off your broth, let it get cool, skim off the fat, and now proceed to cook the meat. Melt some butter or fat at the bottom of your stew-pah first, and turn the meat about in till it begins to take colour, then add your broth (a pint and a half or thereabouts for 3 lbs of meat will be found enough) with two carrots, four good sized onions, a tea-spoonful each of marjoram and thyme, pepper, and salt: let it simmer gently for an hour. Turn the meat, add a couple of onions, and (says Gouffe) a gill of brandy, let the pan simmer for an hour more, - keeping live coals on the lid throughout the process, - and the braise will be complete. Lift out the joint, and keep it on a hot dish, whilst you strain off the gravy remaining in the stew-pan, - it will be half the amount you originally poured in, but much stronger. You can now send up the joint with the gravy plainly poured round it; or you can pass the vegetables, with which the meat was braised, through the sieve, thicken the gravy, and add the pulp of the vegetables to it.