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or savoury, sakd and cheese, with plenty of fresh fruit after, ought 

 to suffice most men. I would have a total change every day, and no 

 matter how partial a man might be to a certain dish, he should not 

 have it of tener than once in eight or ten days, so that when it comes to 

 table he might be able to enjoy it with all the more relish. Instead of 

 getting a slice off the breast of a grouse or half a snipe after he has 

 dined, a man should, if he likes game, eat his entire dinner off one sort 

 one day and another the next, likewise with other meats. 



To have a good dinner three things are essential — the meat must be 

 of the best quality, it must be sufficiently long kept to render it tender, 

 and then it must be properly cooked. Simple as they are we don't 

 always find the triple alliance. I believe in the old-fashioned plan of 

 having meat roasted before a good bright fire and having it well basted 

 the while thus preserving all the natural gravy. When cooked in a 

 range meat gets dried up through want of basting, and the flavour is 

 not nearly as good as when the old plan is followed. 



To preserve meat in hot weather no better or simpler plan can be 

 adopted than placing around the joint pieces of dry turf [peat], same as 

 they are cut for fue . Flies then will not go near the meat, and it will 

 keep good for ten days in the hottest weather ; besides, a dozen 

 pieces of turf will suffice an ordinary larder for years. 



Many of the " professed "cooks of the day whose places are worth 

 £100 to £500 a year would scorn to follow plain old fashioned cooking. 

 They must have the Continental. The consequence is their lords and 

 masters are often kept in ignorance of the natural flavour of a leg of four- 

 year-old mountain matton ten days hung, and sent to table done to a 

 turn and so full of delicious natural gravy that the dish well is half 

 filled after the joint has got the first cut. Neither do they know the 

 taste of a snipe or a woodcock one day killed, cooked before the tire 

 and served with no other condiment than their own trails. No, those 

 and other joints are glazed, and braised, and baked by swell cA<?/«, but 

 they are seldom roasted before the fire and sent up plain. 



I am not for a moment to be understood as finding fault with first- 

 rate fashionable cooking for any reason other than that I believe plain 

 cooking to be more wholesome, and that, personally, I like it better. 

 That the entrees and other dishes handed round at large dinner parties 

 are, as a rule, most excellent in taste there is no manner of doubt, and 

 as fashion at present exists this mode of serving dinner must be 

 followed, and I confess I enjoy very much dining occasionally at these 

 recherche repasts, while no man accords more credit to the chef. All I 

 would ask these professors in the art of cuisine to do is to occasionally 

 send up a joint or a dish of game dressed in the old English and Irish 

 style, for I do think that while nearly all their dishes are good for the 

 mouth some of them are bad for the stomach. Anyhow, after dinner a 

 very refreshing thing is to dip a finger of each hand in the finger-glass 

 and apply a drop of the cold water to the back of the ears. 



Dining after 7 p.m. is, I am sure, very bad for health and diges- 



