In this manner you can successfully dress a leg of mutton, a loin of mutton, a small sirloin, a piece of the ribs or a fillet of beef, in fact all small joints. Larding with strips of fat bacon will vastly improve the braise, especially when the meat is very lean, and if you can make some strong broth from any meat and bones, or if you can spare a little stock from the soup-kettle, you need not bone the joint. The vegetables, etc., should, in this case, be boiled in the stock separately, wine should be added to flavour it, and the joint should be cooked in the mirepoix thus made.

Poultry, ducks, and geese, are far better braised than roasted, unless you keep a fowl-yard of your own, and feed and kill the birds at home. To braise poultry well, you must make the gravy from the giblets, and trimmings of the birds, assisted by a little gravy-meat. In fact all braises are better if you help the gravy with a little extra meat. The French throw in a glass or two of light white wine when braising poultry, and Madeira or Marsala is a sterling aid in cooking mutton or beef in this method. A slice of bacon is very effective with all braised meat.

If you must roast your little joint, see that it is not spitted, - that is, thrust through by the spit; with a little care, a small Indian joint can easily be tied to it. Do not let your cook use coarse wooden skewers, but make him tie a joint into a shape, for every stab inflicted in it, will rob the piece of meat of its juiciness.

Tastes vary so strangely as to the "doing" of meat, that it is impossible to give a rule for roasting. It is, however, essential to use an equal fire throughout the process, and to guard against cooking the outside too fast. Frequent basting is a sine qua non, and you should dredge a little flour over the meat to finish with, to produce a crisp, brown, frothy surface. You should preserve the fat of your sirloin, or loin of mutton, by tying over it a wrapper of buttered paper.

The French place their small joints in marinade, a custom I strongly advocate for the poor meat of this country, when you intend to roast or grill it. Here is their method of cooking a loin of mutton en papillate :- Trim the loin nicely, and let it lie from morning till roasting time en marinade, composed of a breakfast-cupful of salad oil, two onions, and a carrot, sliced fine as for Julienne, with some whole peppers, salt, chopped parsley, and a tea-spoonful of powdered dried sweet herbs. Let the joint be turned several times during the day, and baste it often. When to be dressed, pack it, with its vegetables and all, in a well oiled paper, and roast it carefully, basting it with the oil that composed the marinade : when nearly done, remove the paper, brush off the vegetables, baste with melted butter, and serve, when nicely browned, with other vegetables independently cooked, and some gravy. Though the inexperienced reader will hardly believe me, I can assure him that when finally set before him, he will fail to trace the presence of oil (the bete noir of Englishmen) whilst he will be surprised at the juiciness, and good flavour of the meat.

In roasting Indian poultry, invariably lard the breast with fat bacon, or tie a flap of bacon over it. Birds cannot be kept too moist when roasting. A large sweet onion, and a lump of preserved butter should be put inside the carcass of a fowl, and the basting should be carefully attended to. The slower the roasting the better. I have often found that a fowl baked in a slow oven till about three parts done, and then finished in front of the fire, was excellent. It should be occasionally basted with melted butter whilst in the oven. The bacon tied over the breast should be removed during the last five minutes of the cooking, when the bird should be lightly dredged over with flour, and liberally basted with melted butter to produce the brown, crisp, blisters, which always make a fowl look inviting.

If permitted to follow the customs of the cookroom, the uneducated Ramasamy will send up your roast fowl - hardly as large as an English chicken, - with its breast strangely puffed out and distorted with a horrible compound which he calls "stuffing." This you carefully avoid eating on account of its nastiness, but few, I take it, boldly order their cooks never to perpetrate the atrocity again, being under an impression that stuffing is necessary in roasting poultry.

The only birds that should be stuffed in the crop are turkeys, and exceptionally fine capons. Who anion - you ever saw a roast fowl in England, stuffed? The bar-barons practice has become common out here, and ought to be put down as utterly wrong. Moisture, which is so necessary in roasting, should, as I have already observed, be secured by cither larding the fowl with fat bacon, or tying a slice of bacon over the breast. I however advo-cate a stuffing for the inside of a fowl intended for braising as follows :- well mashed potato, and boiled sweet onion, in the proportion of two-thirds of the former to one-third of the latter. The mashed potato, of course, contains butter, spiced pepper, a little milk or cream, or the yolk of an egg, and helps to preserve the juiciness of the bird; the flavour it imparts too is, I think, agreeable. This with a little chopped sage may be used for ducks.

An author for whom I entertain the greatest respect urges the practice I have mentioned of putting one sweet onion, and a lump of salt butter, inside every chicken, or fowl, to be roasted. But this cannot be called "stuffing." A turke, on the other hand, requires carefully made forcemeat, and. as you all know, there are many varieties thereof. Truffles, and chestnuts form the epicurean stuffing of the roast turkey, and one of oysters is propounded for the boiled bird. I leave these elaborate compositions alone, for receipts can be easily hunted up for them when a special occasion may demand a "dindon truffe a la Peri-gord," or a "dinde braisee a la financiere," etc., etc. The stuffing, I am anxious to discuss, is the ordinary one we remember in England for turkeys, veal, hares, and so on :- a firm, green-tinted forcemeat, flavoured with pleasant herbs, and a suspicion of lemon-peel; a forcemeat which cuts clean with the slice of the breast of your turkey, or fillet of veal, and is nice whether hot or cold. Not a greasy mess, pale brown in colour, and lumpy, which, at the first cut of the knife, oozes out, and encumbers the dish in a most untempting manner.