270 MEALS MEDICINAL, 
larger quantities of the suet if the stomach does not rebel. 
Chopped suet is neither heavy, nor indigestible, if the pudding, 
or dumpling, or other dish in which it is used be boiled, or steamed, 
a sufficiently long time, so as to render it light, and easy of 
digestion. For a plain suet pudding: take one pound of flour, 
half a pound of chopped suet, and a pinch of salt. Mix all 
together, with about a quarter of a pint of cold water; then flour 
a cloth, and put the pudding into it, tie up, and drop it into a 
saucepanful of boiling water, and boil for two or three hours. 
The late Lord Leighton, President of the Royal Academy, 
who loved everything about him to be beautiful in form, colour, 
and texture, and who would have wished, it might be naturally 
supposed, to live almost on ambrosia and nectar, when he was 
asked what he would specially like for his birthday dinner, could 
think (as Miss Cockran tells) of no greater delicacy than roast 
mutton with suet pudding. Tennyson, again, loved beer, and 
chops. So it does not appear that these gifted men, whose pen 
and pencil seem to have been inspired, manifested any special 
nicety of palate, or natural craving for choice culinary dishes. 
FENNEL, 
Tue herb Fennel (Feniculum) of our kitchen gardens is best 
known to cooks as supplying a tasty, fragrant, spicy material 
for sauce to be eaten with boiled mackerel. But furthermore :— 
“* Above the lowly plants it towers, 
The fennel, with its yellow flowers, 
And in an earlier age than ours 
Was gifted with the wondrous powers 
Lost vision to restore.” ie 
A carminative oil is distilled from the Fennel, which is employed 
in the making of cordials. Shakespeare, in his play of Henry 
the Fourth, tells of “eating conger and Fennel” (two highly 
stimulating things together) as the act of a libertine. The 
Garden Fennel is admirably corrective of flatulence. If from 
two to four drops of its essential oil are taken on a small lump 
of sugar, or, similarly, if a tea be made of the bruised green herb, 
and drunk, a small teacupful at a time, any griping of the bowels, 
with flatulent distension, will be promptly relieved ; as likewise 
the bellyache of infants by reduced quantities of the same tea. 
Chemically Fennel yields also a fixed fatty principle, some sugar, 
