Gouffé says: ‘Fat is the best for frying; the light-coloured dripping of roast meat, and the fat taken off broth are to be preferred. These failing, beef suet, chopped fine and melted down on a slow fire, without browning, will do very well; when the bottom of the stewpan can be seen through the suet, it is sufficiently melted.’ He is no advocate for lard, ‘as it always leaves an unpleasant coating of fat on whatever is fried in it.’ Olive oil of the best quality is almost absolutely tasteless, and having as high a boiling point as animal fats it is the best of all frying media. In this country there is a prejudice against the use of such oil. I have noticed at some of those humble but most useful establishments where poor people are supplied with penny or twopenny portions of well-cooked, good fish, that in the front is an inscription stating ‘only the best beef-dripping is used in this establishment.’ This means a repudiation of oil. On my first visit to Arctic Norway I arrived before the garnering and exportation of the spring cod harvest was completed. The packet stopped at a score or so of stations on the Lofodens and the mainland. Foggy weather was no impediment, as an experienced pilot free from catarrh could steer direct to the harbour by ‘following his nose.’ Huge cauldrons stood by the shore in which were stewing the last batches of the livers of codfish caught a month before and exposed in the meantime to the continuous Arctic sunshine. Their condition must be imagined, as I abstain from description of details. The business then proceeding was the extraction of the oil from these livers. It is, of course, ‘cod-liver oil,’ but is known commercially as ‘fish oil,’ or ‘cod oil.’ That which is sold by our druggists as cod-liver oil is described in Norway as ‘medicine oil,’ and though prepared from the same raw material, is extracted in a different manner. Only fresh livers are used for this, and the best quality, the ‘cold-drawn’ oil, is obtained by pressing the livers without stewing. Those who are unfortunately familiar with this carefully-prepared, highly-refined product, know that the fishy flavour clings to it so pertinaciously that all attempts to completely remove it without decomposing the oil have failed. This being the case, it is easily understood that the fish oil stewed so crudely out of the putrid or semi-putrid livers must be nauseous indeed. It is nevertheless used by some of the fish-fryers, and refuse ‘Gallipoli’ (olive oil of the worst quality) is sold for this purpose. The oil obtained in the course of salting sardines, herrings, &c., is also used. Such being the case, it is not surprising that the use of oil for frying should, like the oil itself, be in bad odour. I dwell upon this because we are probably on what, if a fine writer, I should call the ‘eve of a great revolution’ in respect to frying media.