Miss Corson's practical American cookery and household management

roasts. The hip- or thick-end of the sirloin or porterhouse cut makes the finest beefsteaks, the two hip-bone or tenderloin steaks being the best large beefsteaks in the entire carcass. The middle porterhouse steaks are smaller, and have a good proportion of tenderloin or filet; the thin end of the sirloin gives small porterhouse steaks of excellent flavor. Beyond the hip-bone sirloin steak, come the flat- and roundbone sirloin steaks, which are large, juicy, and well-flavored ; then the ordinary large sirloin steaks reach to the rump-piece. The tenderloin ox filet of beef runs under the sirloin, beginning at the round-bone sirloin steak, and running up to about the third small porterhouse, — from fifteen to twenty inches, — and weighing five pounds or more. Rump and round steaks cut from fine beef are composed of firm, juicy, wellflavored flesh, and in point of nutriment compare favorably with any portion. The roasting-ribs are cut from the forequarter ; they number in all thirteen, and are usually cut in twos or threes, according to the size or weight required. The first two or three are called the first-cut ribs ; then come the second- or middle-cut, reaching as far as the fifth or sixth rib ; the third-cut ribs reach up to the chuck- or shoulderribs, which begin at the ninth rib : all these cuts are juicy, tender, and highly flavored. The four chuck-ribs proper run up to the neck. The piece of shoulder-blade running through the chuck-ribs can be cut out by the butcher, and replaced with a piece of fat. The chuck-ribs are divided according to the requirements of the purchaser : their flavor is sweet ; and, as they are marbled with fat in good beef, they rank next the sirloin, either as roasts or steaks. The chuck nearest the neck is inferior in quality to the other end near the ribs proper. VEAL. The best veal is from a milk-fed calf about six weeks old. Veal less than a month old is watery, soft, and insipid. Good veal shows a fine-grained, juicy flesh, of a delicate pinkish color, with firm white fat. When the food of calves is changed to grass, hay, or meal, the character of the flesh changes : it is harder, less juicy, and darker in color, and the fat grows yellowish. When the flesh of veal is very white, it may have been blanched for the purpose of changing the appearance of poor veal to that of good quality. The flesh of the second quality of veal is. red, contrasted with the pinkish-white prime flesh, and the fat is coarser-grained and less abundant. The poorest kind of veal has decidedly red flesh, and very littie kidney-fat. When the kidney-fat of any quality of veal begins to grow soft and clammy, the meat is on the verge of spoiling. Bob-veal is the flesh of calves killed when they are less than three weeks old : the flesh is soft, semi-gelatinous, and sticky, and the fat is scant and flabby. It is utterly unfit for food : being the first flesh of the young creature, unchanged by the healthful action of sun and air, it is devoid of those elements which make good flesh a wholesome food. The influence of sun and air upon the blood of animals is well understood by, stock-raisers, who have demonstrated that far better meat is produced by animals fattened in the open air than by those that are housed for any considerable length of time.