Melted butter is the grand and chief basis of most English sauces. Melted butter and oysters, melted butter and parsley, melted butter and anchovies, melted butter and eggs, melted butter and shrimps, melted butter and lobsters, melted butter and capers, are nearly all the sauces used in England. Besides these, the following flavouring substances are in common use: _viz._ mushrooms, onions, spices, sweet herbs, wine, soy, and the usual condiments, but melted butter, gravy, or some farinaceous mucilage, form the basis of all sauces. These substances combined in different proportions are quite sufficient to make an endless variety of picquant sauces, as pleasant to the palate and stomach, as the most compound foreign sauces in which every thing has the same taste, and none its own taste. The aim of the English cooks, as far as it regards sauces, appears to be to let every sauce display a decided character, so as to taste only of the material from which it derives its name. _Compound sauces_ are seldom employed, but in the _learned_ foreign dishes. What has been observed, relative to time used in the article, of _made dishes_, namely, that it was in this country too valuable to be bestowed on eating, or on preparing to eat, applies also in the case of making sauces. Nothing can be made more easily than the English sauces, but the variety of French sauces are great, and much skill and time are necessary for preparing most of them. THICKENING PASTE FOR BROTH, SOUP, GRAVY, AND MADE DISHES. It is customary to thicken some dishes with a compound of two parts of flour and one of butter, first made into a paste by heating slowly the ingredients in a pan, till the mass acquires a yellow gold colour, the flour and butter being stirred all the time to prevent the mass from burning to the bottom of the pan. The substance thus obtained is called _thickening_, or _thickening paste_, for it is the basis employed by cooks for thickening soups, gravies, stews, sauces, and other dishes. The mass readily combines with water; a large table spoonful is sufficient to thicken a quart of meat broth. Besides this _thickening paste_, other farinaceous substances are employed for that purpose, such as bread raspings, crumbs of stale bread, biscuit powder, potatoe mucilage, oatmeal, sago powder, rice powder, &c. A cow-heel, on account of the vast quantity of gelatine with which it abounds, is excellently well calculated for giving _body_ to soups: the cow-heel, after being cracked, is boiled with the broth or soup. COLOURING FOR BROTH, SOUP, GRAVIES, AND MADE DISHES.