There is all the difference in the world between boiling meat which is to be eaten, and meat whose juices are to be extracted in the form of soup. If the meat is required as nourishment, of course you want the juices kept in. To do this it is necessary to plunge it into boiling water, which will cause the albumen in the meat to coagulate suddenly, and act as a plug or stopper to all the tubes of the meat, so that the nourishment will be tightly kept in. The temperature of the water should be kept at boiling-point for five minutes, and then as much cold water must be added as will reduce the temperature to 1650. If the whole be kept at this temperature for some hours, you have all the conditions united which give to the flesh the quality best adapted for its use as food. The juices are kept in the meat, and instead of being called upon to consume an insipid mass of indigestible fibres, we have a tender piece of meat, from which, when cut, the imprisoned juices run freely. If the meat be allowed to remain in the boiling water without the addition of any cold to it, it becomes in a short time altogether cooked, but it will be as hard as iron, and utterly indigestible, and therefore unwholesome.

If soup is to be made out of meat, then it stands to reason we want all the juices which we can possibly extract from the meat to mix with the water. Therefore the meat should be put into cold water, with a little salt and a few vegetables (if in a poor family a few crusts of bread may be added at the last minute), and allowed to simmer as long as possible. It is undoubtedly the most economical form of nourishment which exists, and it is an absurd prejudice to suppose that the same amount of meat is invariably more valuable to the human system if it be frizzled in a greasy frying-pan, so that it becomes burnt outside but remains raw within, and eaten in this state as "good solid food," dear to the heart (but surely not to the stomach) of a true Englishman. In the first place, even a pound of meat will only feed one person in a solid form, whereas, if to exactly the same weight of meat be added a pint of cold water, a few vegetables, or even herbs, a couple of potatoes, a bone or two, a scrap of bacon, an onion - almost anything which comes handy - we have at once the pot-au-feu of the French peasant, and produce a warm, savoury, wholesome meal for two or three persons. It may be as well to mention that the scum which rises on the top of the water whilst meat is boiling is always useless and unwholesome, and should be got rid of as completely as possible. The way to help this scum to rise, so as to be able to get rid of it, is to keep pouring in a little cold water from time to time. This will always have the effect of sending up some of the obnoxious substance to the top, from whence it should speedily be removed.

Stewing occupies a sort of middle position between roasting and boiling, and must be carefully attended to, if the meat is not to be hardened instead of softened by the process. It is desirable to dip meat into boiling water for stewing as well as boiling, unless indeed it should have been soaked before. What, for instance, makes hashed mutton a byword of nastiness ? Because an ignorant cook plunges her chunks of cold meat into a greasy gravy when it is at boiling-point, thereby thoroughly and hopelessly hardening the meat, and then serves up the mess with large pieces of half-toasted bread. Now, is this way more extravagant? I can answer for its being more palatable. Make a nice little gravy of any cold stock - and a good cook will always have a small basin or cup full of stock by her - add an onion finely shredded and fried, a little pepper and salt, and, if it is to be had, a tea-spoonful of ketchup. Let the mixture come to boiling-point, without boiling over, and strain it into another saucepan. If you have only one saucepan, strain it into a basin, quickly clean out your saucepan, and pour the gravy back into it, setting it aside to let it get nearly quite cold. Then, and not until then, lay in thinly-cut, small slices of the cold meat, and let the gravy and the meat warm thoroughly and gradually together, without boiling, but don't allow it to stew too long. Whilst it is getting ready, have the frying-pan ready with a little boiling fat (not that which fish has been fried in, remember), and put into it some small, thin, three-cornered pieces of bread, which will quickly fry into a crisp toast. Serve these round the hash, which, by the way, should not be swamped in gravy, and I can answer that a certain cockney millionaire friend of mine will no longer issue this solemn warning to his family: "Never eat 'ashes away from 'ome."

But to return to stewing. If it be properly understood and practised, stewed meat makes a very agreeable and palatable change from the monotonous boiling and roasting which alternate on the middle-class daily bill of fare. A shoulder of mutton stewed, Indian fashion, with a handful of well-washed rice, a few Sultana raisins, half a dozen cloves, and a tea-spoonful of currie powder to flavour it, makes an agreeable change. Some meats are far more wholesome also when stewed than when roast; as veal, for instance, and many kinds of fish. Eels are invariably more wholesome stewed than boiled - though all fish is wholesomer boiled than fried, for stewing is a more gradual process than boiling, and the fat is more surely got rid of. If it should ever be necessary to cook a beefsteak which has not yet had time to become tender by keeping, then, for the sake of the digestion of the family, it would be better to stew it, and this is the way it should be done.

The meat should first be cut into convenient, but large-sized pieces (all the fat having been removed) and lightly fried on both sides in butter or clarified dripping. This will make it of a nice brown colour, and prevent the pale flabby appearance it would otherwise present. Then get a saucepan and put the meat into it, with a little sliced onion, turnips and carrots (which are also improved by being half-fried first), pepper and salt, and a tea-spoonful of any sauce you prefer. If there is any stock, add it, but if not, put in about half a pint of water, and let it all simmer very gently for two or three hours. At the last moment skim it well, for it is odious if it be greasy ; stir in a few pinches of flour to thicken the gravy, and let it all boil up together for a couple of minutes before serving. Some people are very fond of fat with all their food, though they should bear in mind that fat affords no nourishment whatever to the human body. It merely goes to make fat. A stout person should therefore not eat much fat, and a thin one should. The function of fat, as we all know, is like starch or sugar, to keep up the heat of the animal, and a certain proportion is even present in healthy animal muscle; so it does not do to buy lean meat, although all the fat on the joint need not be sent up to table. However, it is necessary to serve a certain portion of fat with stewed steak, but do not let it stew with the meat, for it will only melt and rise to the surface in the scum which has to be so carefully removed. Rather keep the fat till the last moment, cut it into little pieces a couple of inches long, and put it by itself in the frying-pan or on a gridiron for a minute or two just to cook it, and serve it in golden-brown nodules on the top of the stewed meat.

All nice cooking - be its materials ever so simple - is more or less troublesome ; but I have always found (and the experience of others bears out my own) that bad cooks will take quite as much trouble to spoil food. It is therefore a great pity that when a woman is conscious of her own deficiencies and is anxious and willing to improve by learning, she should not have the opportunity of doing so. But unfortunately cooking is not to be learned from a book, nor from a lecture. It is an art in which practical experience, supplementing theoretical information, alone can be of any use. It is doubtless a great advantage to intelligent beginners to have the why and wherefore of everything explained to them either by voice or page, but it is equally necessary for them to see with their own eyes and try with their own hands the result of these instructions, for half-an-hour's practice is worth a week's theorizing, in cooking as well as in other things.