Medical statistics tell us that of all diseases with which the English are afflicted, those arising directly or indirectly from impaired digestive organs are the most prevalent. We are falsely accused in consequence of over-eating; but the true cause of our ailments is bad cooking. A Frenchman or a German devours much more at one of his own inexhaustible _tables-d’hôte_ than an Englishman consumes at his dining-table—and with impunity; for the foreigner’s food being properly prepared is easily digested. ‘The true difference,’ says a pleasant military writer in Blackwood’s Magazine, ‘between English and foreign cookery is just this: in preparing butcher’s meat for the table, the aim of foreign cookery is to make it tender, of English to make it hard. And both systems equally effect their object, in spite of difficulties on each side. The butcher’s meat, which you buy abroad, is tough, coarse-grained, and stringy; yet foreign cookery sends this meat to table tender. The butcher’s meat which you buy in England is tender enough when it comes home; but domestic cookery sends it up hard. Don’t tell me the hardness is in the meat itself. Nothing of the kind; it’s altogether an achievement of the English cuisine. I appeal to a leg of mutton, I appeal to a beef-steak, as they usually come to table; the beef half-broiled, the mutton half-roasted. Judge for yourself. The underdone portion of each is tender; the portion that’s dressed is hard. Argal, the hardness is due to the dressing, not to the meat: it is a triumph of domestic cookery. Engage a “good plain cook”—tell her to boil a neck of mutton, that will show you what I mean. All London necks of mutton come to table crescents, regularly curled.’ This is but too true: the real art of stewing is almost unknown in Great Britain, and even in Ireland, despite the fame of an ‘Irish stew.’ Everything that is not roasted or fried, is boiled, ‘a gallop,’ till the quality of tenderness is consolidated to the consistency of caoutchouc. Such a thing as a stewpan is almost unknown in houses supported by less than from three to five hundred a year.