4 MEATS.
the butcher. If dishonest, she will allow the tradesmen to send inferior goods whilst charging for the primest quality, and will encourage a proportion of fat with every joint that no good housekeeper would ever dream of permitting, as it increases her perquisite of dripping and kitchen fat. Insist on a ticket bearing the date and weight of each joint accompanying it into the house, and resolutely enforce the appearance of these tickets each week when the butcher's book comes up for payment. Also now and again pay a surprise visit at the time of the butcher's visit, and see the meat he has brought and verify its weight for yourself. This will often open your eyes to the discrepancy between the weight of the meat as in your butcher's book and the look of the joint on the table. Moreover, a careless cook without the least dishonesty will waste and then throw the blame on the tradesman.
To return, however, to our beef. Where economy has to be considered, frozen meat is often bought, and if obtained from a trustworthy source and properly treated will be little inferior to the average home-fed beef, though it must be confessed that naturally it will not bear comparison with really first-rate English-fed Scotch ox beef. Foreign meat is judged in much the same way as the home-grown, though a somewhat darker purplish tone of the flesh tints, in the round especially, may be observed. It is also moister on the surface than English beef; but be careful in this matter, for foreign beef badly, or too rapidly, thawed will “weep,” as it is technically