INTRODUCTION 5 



for four or five or even more years, the less perfect bull being 

 slaughtered after one, or at most two, years' service. 



On one visit to Leeuwarden, I remember seeing, at the abattoir 

 belonging to a large firm of exporters, no less than six hundred 

 "sides" from the carcases of young bulls that had been pur- 

 chased on the market that same morning for shipment to London 

 by one firm ; and yet that very morning I had searched in vain 

 for a veteran. For, of course, these old bulls are the choicest 

 specimens of their race, and I was anxious to inspect any that 

 happened to be on the market. 



If one contrasts a market full of animals such as this with the 

 good and the bad, the old and the young, the lean and the ex- 

 travagantly fat found in any of our large sale-yards, one does 

 not wonder at many of one's countrymen not knowing that cows 

 and bulls yield wholesome food. On one occasion a young 

 Englishman, of quite average intelligence and well-informed 

 in many matters, asked me if I was allowed by law to sell my 

 cows, once I had done milking them, for human food! I am 

 not at all sure that he believed me when I told him that 80 per 

 cent, of the beef he ate when travelling on the continent was 

 the flesh of such animals, and I fancy that most of our English 

 tourists are much in the same state of mind as my friend. 



This class of meat must, however, be held to be inferior to 

 our prime joints, and though by good cooking the cow-beef of 

 the continent may be brought very much nearer to the prime 

 " Roast Beef of Old England," it will always be its inferior. To 

 imagine ourselves a nation of cooks is difficult, but it is easier 

 to do this than to imagine that our national standard of living 

 should fall to the level of cow-beef served from the kitchen of 

 the housewife who for the past generation has had nothing in 

 her larder but good English meat. For myself, I am content to 

 hope for the day when the average English cook will seldom, or 

 never, spoil the prime article which the profligate state of our 

 pre-war supplies had made super-abundant. If the continental 

 meat supply were to be forced on our people as an immediate 

 consequence of the war, their sufferings would be considerable, 

 for it would take a generation, at least, to train a class of cooks 

 that could be trusted to send it to table in a palatable form 



