Confining our attention at present to the albumen, what must happen if the fish or flesh is put in cold water, which is gradually heated? Obviously a loss of albumen by exudation and diffusion through the water, especially in the case of sliced fish or of meat exposing much surface of fibres cut across. It is also evident that such loss of albumen will be shown by its coagulation when the water is sufficiently heated. Practical readers will at once recognise in the ‘scum’ which rises to the surface of the boiling water, and in the milkiness that is more or less diffused throughout it, the evidence of such loss of albumen. This loss indicates the desirability of plunging the fish or flesh at once into water hot enough to immediately coagulate the superficial albumen, and thereby plug the pores through which the inner albuminous juice otherwise exudes. But this is not all. There are other juices besides the albumen; these are the most important of the _flavouring_ constituents, and, _with the other constituents of animal food_, have great nutritive value; so much so, that animal food is quite tasteless and almost worthless without them. I have laid especial emphasis on the above qualification, lest the reader should be led into an error originated by the bone-soup committee of the French Academy, and propagated widely by Liebig—that of regarding these juices as a concentrated nutriment when taken alone. They constitute collectively the _extractum carnis_, which, with the addition of more or less gelatine (the less the better), is commonly sold as Liebig’s ‘Extract of Meat.’ It is prepared by simply mincing lean meat, exposing it to the action of cold water, and then evaporating down the solution of extract thus obtained. I shall return to this on reaching the subjects of clear soups and beef-tea, at present merely adding as evidence of the importance of retaining these juices in cooked meat, that the extracts of beef, mutton, and pork may be distinguished by their specific flavours. Some Extract of Kangaroo, sent to me many years ago from Australia by the Ramornie Company, made a soup that was curiously different in flavour from the other extract similarly prepared by the same company. Epicures pronounced it very choice and ‘gamey.’[5] When these juices are removed from the meat, mutton, beef, pork, &c., the remaining solids are all alike, so far as the palate alone can distinguish.