ions: the application of heat must be gradual, steady,
long 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 skilful 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