The substance employed for colouring soups, gravies, broths, and other dishes, requiring a brown colour, is burnt sugar. This imparts to the dish a fine yellowish brown tinge, without giving any sensible flavour to the dish. Eight ounces of powdered lump sugar, and two or three table spoonfuls of water, are suffered to boil gently in an iron pan, till the mass has assumed a dark brown colour, which takes place when all the water is evaporated, and the sugar begins to be partly charred by the action of the heat. The mass is then removed from the fire, and about a quarter of a pint of water is gradually added to effect a solution. The fluid thus obtained is of a syrupy consistence, and of a fine dark brown colour; a small quantity gives to broth, soup, or gravy, a bright orange colour, without altering sensibly the flavour of the dish. Some cooks add to it mushroom catsup and port wine. STOCK FOR MAKING EXTEMPORANEOUS BROTH, SOUP, OR GRAVY. The name of _stock_ is given to meat jelly produced from a decoction of meat, so highly concentrated that the fluid, when cold, exhibits an elastic tremulous consistence. The meat is slowly boiled in water, with the customary seasonings, as pot herbs, or esculent roots, and the decoction skimmed, and continued to simmer till it is charged with a sufficient quantity of animal matter to form a jelly when cold; this degree of concentration is known by removing, from time to time, a portion of the fluid, and suffering it to cool. When the decoction has been so far concentrated, it is strained off through a sieve and suffered to repose, that the insoluble part, if any, may subside. When this has been effected, the clear fluid is suffered to cool, which causes the fatty matter it contains to become collected at the surface, where it forms a cake or crust, which is to be removed. The substance underneath is a tremulous jelly; it is called first stock, or long broth, (_Le grand bouillon_ of the French kitchen). If the jelly be not transparent it is re-melted by a gentle heat, and clarified by the addition of the white of eggs added to it, as soon as it is liquified. This substance becoming coagulated at the boiling heat, entangles with it the parts mechanically diffused through the jelly, and rises to the top as a dense scum. It may then be removed by a skimmer. The name of _second-stock_ (_Jus de bœuf_ of the French) is given to a more concentrate jelly of meat made in a similar manner. It is chiefly employed as the basis of all savoury made dishes and rich sauces, whilst the former serves for making extemporaneous soups. _Second stock_ is usually prepared in the following manner:--Put into a stew-pan about half a pound of lean bacon or ham, a few carrots and onions, two or three cloves, about six or eight pounds of lean beef, and a shin of beef of about the same weight, break the bone, and having scored the meat, suffer it to simmer over a very gentle fire, with