protracted, never reaching the point of active
boiling. Hours of quiet simmering dissolve all dissoluble parts,
soften the sternest fibre, and unlock every minute cell in which
Nature has stored away her treasures of nourishment. This careful and
protracted application of heat and the skillful use of flavors
constitute the two main points in all those nice preparations of meat
for which the French have so many names,--processes by which a
delicacy can be imparted to the coarsest and cheapest food superior to
that of the finest articles under less philosophic treatment.

French soups and stews are a study, and they would not be an
unprofitable one to any person who wishes to live with comfort and
even elegance on small means.

John Bull looks down from the sublime of ten thousand a year on French
kickshaws, as he calls them: "Give me my meat cooked so I may know
what it is!" An ox roasted whole is dear to John's soul, and his
kitchen arrangements are Titanic. What magnificent rounds and sirloins
of beef, revolving on self-regulating spits, with a rich click of
satisfaction, before grates piled with roaring fires! Let us do
justice to the royal cheer. Nowhere are the charms of pure,
unadulterated animal food set forth in more imposing style. For John
is rich, and what does he care for odds and ends and parings? Has he
not all the beasts of the forest, and the cattle on a thousand hills?
What does he want of economy? But his brother Jean has not ten
thousand pounds a year,--nothing like it; but he makes up for the
slenderness of his purse by boundless fertility of invention and
delicacy of practice. John began sneering at Jean's soups and ragouts,
but all John's modern sons and daughters send to Jean for their cooks,
and the sirloins of England rise up and do obeisance to this Joseph
with a white apron who comes to rule in their kitchens.

There is no animal fibre that will not yield itself up to long-continued,
steady heat. But the difficulty with almost any of the common servants
who call themselves cooks is, that they have not the smallest notion of
the philosophy of the application of heat. Such a one will complacently
tell you, concerning certain meats, that the harder you boil them the
harder they grow,--an obvious fact, which, under her mode of treatment
by an indiscriminate galloping boil, has frequently come under her
personal observation. If you tell her that such meat must stand for six
hours in a heat just