COLD MUTTON

But to return to that leg of mutton, of which there should now remain little else but the bone. There is a use for it, and a very important one too ; for without stock or gravy of some sort no cooking can go very far. The British cook has an idea that no gravy or stock can be made without shin of beef, and a good deal of it. Of course there is gravy and gravy, and I will not deny that a leg of mutton bone will not make so good a stock, i.e., yield as much gelatine, as a piece of shin of beef ; but what I maintain is, that it will make or help to make a very fair stock, quite good enough for the cook to make her hashes and ragouts with, supposing she knows how to make it and them.

Every bone that is not tainted should be boiled down with a proper addition of vegetables, spices,' &c., so as to give a well flavoured broth, or whatever you choose to call it. This is to be the foundation, as it were, of all the soups, sauces, &c., which may be required. Not but that a very good soup can be made out of bones and such like odds and ends. I have eaten a soup, in the making of which no other animal element had been used but a leg of mutton bone, the carcase of a pheasant, and a few scraps of bacon, chiefly skin. That soup was as good as, if not better, than some I have tasted in the making of which the tail as well as the shin of an ox had been used.