The reason I have placed this subject in a separate lesson is because of its enormous importance in the sick-room. More delicate children are reared into health and strength, and more lives are saved, by good beef-tea than most of us have any idea of. This is the more extraordinary when we remember that even the strongest and best beef-tea contains an almost infinitesimal amount of actual nourishment. So that it is not to its capacity for supplying to the wasted and feeble human frame either strength or nourishment that we must attribute its wonderful efficacy. If the strongest beef-tea be analysed, the meat would be found to have lost in the process of turning into liquid nearly all its albumen, fibrine, and caseine. In other words, it would have parted with its most important constituents; and we might suppose it therefore to be valueless to the human system. But Experience steps in where Chemistry stops and shakes her head, and Experience declares that well-made beef-tea possesses a reparative power on a weakened digestion which nothing else in the world except milk can come near. It may not actually contain all the elements of nourishment within itself, as milk does, but it is a wonderful assimilator. It soothes and repairs and collects the enfeebled organs and juices, and enables them to return to their proper functions. Therefore we say that beef-tea is nourishing, when it is not in the least nourishing in itself, but it has the power of making ready for other substances to nourish.

Although every sort of meat can be made into soup or broth, bee makes the best and wholesomest. For one reason of this we must search in the fibrine, which holds more red juice than that of any other meat, and it is this red juice which we particularly want. Everybody knows that the leanest meat is the best for soup-making; the least particle of fat is out of place in broth or soups, and indeed renders it absolutely unwholesome as well as nauseous.

In many emergencies beef-tea has to be prepared at almost a moment's notice, and then I would recommend that the meat be as thoroughly freed from fat as possible, chopped finely, and soaked in its own weight of cold water for ten minutes or so. Then heat it slowly to boiling-point, let it boil for two or three minutes, and you will have a strong and delicious beef-tea, better than can be obtained by boiling in the ordinary way for many hours. Another method is to place the finely-chopped meat in a large, clean jam-pot, with a little water and a pinch of salt. The mouth of the vessel should be closed by means of a tightly-tied bladder or a thick paste all over it, as if it were a meat-pudding, and placed in a saucepan half full of cold water. The saucepan should then be covered with its own lid and set upon or by the side of the fire to simmer slowly. If there be no time to let the beef-tea or essence in the jam-pot get cold, it must be skimmed as clearly as possible, and any extra globules of fat floating on the surface removed by a careful application of white blotting paper. Some people do not add any water at all to the cut-up beef, under the impression that the essence must be stronger without the addition. But my individual experience teaches me that whereas the difference in nutritive value is very slight, sick people do not like the beef-tea thus prepared, and will not take it so readily as when it has been made after the following manner. It is necessary, however, to state that the process I am now going to describe cannot be hurried, and that it is therefore imperative to have one day's notice when beef-tea made in this way is required.

Take two or three pounds of the leanest beef to be procured, add one quart of water, and two shank bones of mutton, which bones should be well washed before using. A pinch of salt, and another pinch of grated lemon-peel, or a tiny bit of the peel itself, are all I should add, for a sick person's throat is generally too tender for pepper, and his palate too delicate for anything like flavouring or sauces. The lean meat and shank bones are to be put into a saucepan, whose white enamelled lining should be daintily and scrupulously clean, and the saucepan, with its lid fitting very close indeed, set by the side of a moderately good fire to simmer slowly the whole day long. It must never approach boiling, and yet the action of fire upon its contents should be decided, though gentle. At the last moment before shutting up for the night, strain the soup through a fine hair sieve into a clean basin, and in the morning you should find, beneath a preserving scum of fat, about a pint of clear, solid, beef jelly, which can either be eaten cold, or warmed, without the addition of one drop of water, into a delicious dean-tasting cup of beef-tea. In cold weather double the quantity may be made, but in that case it should be poured into two basins, and the fat left to hermetically seal the second basin until it be wanted in its turn for use. In hot weather the beef-tea should be prepared fresh every day for the next day's consumption. I have seen beef-tea rendered perfectly colourless and white by repeated strainings through fine muslin sieves, but I do not know that this is any particular advantage.

In some cases, such as the terrible state of the intestines after typhoid fever, beef-tea is no use as a reparative agent when prepared after the above fashion. The meat should then not be cooked at all, only cut up as lean and fresh and full of red juice as possible, and soaked for ten or twelve hours in a small quantity of cold water. This will give a liquid which has never been submitted to the action of fire, and which looks and tastes like the gravy of under-done meat, but it is of the highest reparative value to the lacerated stomach. A judicious nurse will take care that her patient never sees this sort of beef-tea until he has learned to drink it freely, which he will do if not at first disgusted by the sight of the clear red fluid. I have dwelt thus minutely on the value and process of making beef-tea because I believe it to be the strongest resource of the culinary art in sickness; but the proper preparation of soup is of great importance in all households. It is at once an economical, wholesome and savoury form of nourishing food ; yet, to many a plain cook, soup, unless she has costly materials bought expressly for its manufacture, merely means greasy hot water flavoured by a soupcon of plate-washing ! No soup should be used the same day it is made, on account of the impossibility of removing all the scum and fat. But, supposing that a scrag end of mutton, or the trimmings of cutlets, or bones with a fair amount of meat left on, should have been simmering gently all the preceding day, and allowed to get cold at night, so that the layer of fat (which can be used for other purposes) is easily removed, then we should proceed this way, always imagining it is wanted for the use of a poor and economical family. To the clear, fat-free soup, add half a tea-cupful of well-washed pearl barley or rice - and we must remember that the inferior and cheaper kind of rice does just as well as the best for this purpose - a few cleaned and cut-up vegetables, a little onion, pepper and salt, a sprig or two of herbs tied together, a little pea-meal, any cold potatoes left from yesterday's dinner, and the whole allowed to simmer together, without removing the remains of the meat and bones, until it be wanted, great care being taken that it should not boil away. The result of this simmering ought to be a nice, warm, comforting, clean-tasting basin of broth, very different to the weak, greasy liquid which results from a hastier preparation. It is a very common mistake with all cooks, except the very best, to put too much water in the first instance to their materials for soup, and so produce a good deal of weak, tasteless meat-tea, instead of a smaller quantity of strong, good soup. English people do not use macaroni half so freely as they might, for, apart from its nutritive value as offering such a pure form of wheaten flour, it is exceedingly cheap. Boiled with ever so little soup made in the way just described (before the addition of the rice or vegetables), it would form an excellent and wholesome change to the smallest bill of fare.

All cooks prefer beef to anything else for making soup, but a very nourishing and delicate broth can be made from two parts of veal and one part of lean beef, or from chicken or rabbit, though the latter is not advisable for sick people. Everyone knows the value of good fat-cleared mutton broth such as I have just described, but there is a good deal of truth in the instinct which leads the sick person to prefer beef-tea, and the healthy labouring man to buy a couple of pounds of beef instead of double the quantity of any other meat. Beef contains most iron, which in the state of oxide is one of the chief constituents of the blood : and we must bear in mind that the nutriment of all carnivorous animals is derived from the blood originally. A diet, therefore, to be strengthening, must contain a certain amount of iron, and we do not obtain this so readily from any other meat as from beef.