r artificial relish is here not only needless, but
offensive.

In the case of veal, we demand "stuffing." Yes, for veal is a somewhat
insipid meat, and by experience we have discovered the best method of
throwing into relief such inherent goodness as it has. The stuffing does
not disguise, nor seek to disguise; it accentuates. Good veal
stuffing--reflect!--is in itself a triumph of culinary instinct; so bland
it is, and yet so powerful upon the gastric juices.

Did I call veal insipid? I must add that it is only so in comparison
with English beef and mutton. When I think of the "brown" on the edge of
a really fine cut of veal--!

VIII.

As so often when my thought has gone forth in praise of things English, I
find myself tormented by an after-thought--the reflection that I have
praised a time gone by. Now, in this matter of English meat. A
newspaper tells me that English beef is non-existent; that the best meat
bearing that name has merely been fed up in England for a short time
before killing. Well, well; we can only be thankful that the quality is
still so good. Real English mutton still exists, I suppose. It would
surprise me if any other country could produce the shoulder I had
yesterday.

Who knows? Perhaps even our own cookery has seen its best days. It is a
lamentable fact that the multitude of English people nowadays never taste
roasted meat; what they call by that name is baked in the oven--a totally
different thing, though it may, I admit, be inferior only to the right
roast. Oh, the sirloin of old times, the sirloin which I can remember,
thirty or forty years ago! That was English, and no mistake, and all the
history of civilization could show nothing on the table of mankind to
equal it. To clap that joint into a steamy oven would have been a crime
unpardonable by gods and man. Have I not with my own eyes seen it
turning, turning on the spit? The scent it diffused was in itself a cure
for dyspepsia.

It is very long since I tasted a slice of boiled beef; I have a suspicion
that the thing is becoming rare. In a household such as mine, the
"round" is impracticable; of necessity it must be large, altogether too
large for our requirements. But what exquisite memories does my mind
preserve! The very colouring of a round, how rich it is, yet how
delicate, and how subtly varied! The odour is totally distinct from that
of roast beef, and yet it is beef incontestable. Hot, of course