Now, here we require a little more chemistry. There is smoking and smoking; smoking that produces a detestable flavour, and smoking that does no mischief at all beyond appearances. The flame of an ordinary coal fire is due to the distillation and combustion of tarry vapours. If such a flame strikes a comparatively cool surface like that of the meat, it will condense and deposit thereon a film of crude coal tar and coal naphtha, most nauseous and rather mischievous; but if the flame be that which is caused by the combustion of its own fat, the deposit on a mutton-chop will be a little mutton juice, on a beefsteak a little beef juice, more or less blackened by mutton-carbon or beef-carbon. But these have no other flavour than that of cooked mutton and cooked beef; therefore they are perfectly innocent, in spite of their black, guilty appearances. If any of my readers are sceptical, let them appeal to experiment by putting a mutton-chop to the torture, and taking its own confession. To do this, divide the chop in equal halves, then hold one half over a flaming coal, immersing it in the flame, and thus cook it. Now cut a bit of fat off the other, throw this fat on a surface of clear, glowing, flameless coal or coke, and, when a good blaze is thus obtained, immerse the half chop recklessly and unmercifully into _this_ flame; there let it splutter and fizz, let it drop more fat and make more flame, but hold it there nevertheless for a few minutes, and then taste the result. In spite of its blackness, it will be (if just warmed through to the above-named cooking temperature) a deliciously-cooked, juicy, nutritious, digestible morsel, apparently raw, but actually more completely cooked than if it had been held twice as long, at double the distance, from the surface of the fire. For further instruction, make a third experiment by imitating the cautious unscientific cook, who, ignorant of the difference between the condensation products of coal and those from beef and mutton fat, carefully raises the gridiron directly the flame from the dropping fat threatens the object of her solicitude. The result will be an ordinary domestic chop or steak. I apply this adjective, because in this particular effort of cookery, the grilling of chops and steaks, domestic cookery is commonly at fault. The majority of our City men find that while the joint cooked at home is better than that they usually get at restaurants and hotels, the chops and steaks are inferior.