r other ministrations, till finally, when thoroughly
saturated and dinner-hour impends, she bethinks herself, and crowds
the fire below to a roaring heat, and finishes the process by a smart
burn, involving the kitchen and surrounding precincts in volumes of
Stygian gloom.

From such preparations has arisen the very current medical opinion
that fried meats are indigestible. They are indigestible if they are
greasy; but French cooks have taught us that a thing has no more need
to be greasy because emerging from grease than Venus had to be salt
because she rose from the sea.

There are two ways of frying employed by the French cook. One is, to
immerse the article to be cooked in _boiling_ fat, with an emphasis on
the present participle,--and the philosophical principle is, so
immediately to crisp every pore at the first moment or two of
immersion as effectually to seal the interior against the intrusion of
greasy particles; it can then remain as long as may be necessary
thoroughly to cook it, without imbibing any more of the boiling fluid
than if it were enclosed in an eggshell. The other method is, to rub a
perfectly smooth iron surface with just enough of some oily substance
to prevent the meat from adhering, and cook it with a quick heat, as
cakes are baked on a griddle. In both these cases there must be the
most rapid application of heat that can be made without burning, and
by the adroitness shown in working out this problem the skill of the
cook is tested. Any one whose cook attains this important secret will
find fried things quite as digestible and often more palatable than
any other.

In the second department of meat cookery, to wit, the slow and gradual
application of heat for the softening and dissolution of its fibre and
the extraction of its juices, common cooks are equally untrained.
Where is the so-called cook who understands how to prepare soups and
stews? These are precisely the articles in which a French kitchen
excels. The soup kettle, made with a double bottom to prevent burning,
is a permanent, ever-present institution, and the coarsest and most
impracticable meats distilled through that alembic come out again in
soups, jellies, or savory stews. The toughest cartilage, even the
bones, being first cracked, are here made to give forth their hidden
virtues, and to rise in delicate and appetizing forms. One great law
governs all these preparations: the application of heat must be
gradual, steady, long