Another experiment on the cooking of old hens was recently made by a neighbour at my suggestion, and proved very successful. The bird was cut up and gently stewed in fat like the small joints of my experiments described in p. 57. I have not yet repeated this experiment, but when I do shall use bacon liquor (the surplus fat from grilled bacon) for the bath, and hope thereby to obtain an approach to the effect of ‘larding,’ as practised in luxurious cookery. One of the great advantages of stewing is that it affords a means of obtaining a savoury and very wholesome dish at a minimum of cost. A small piece of meat may be stewed with a large quantity of vegetables, the juice of the meat savouring the whole. Besides this, it costs far less fuel than roasting. The wife of the French or Swiss landed proprietor—_i.e._ a working peasant—cooks the family dinner with less than a tenth of the expenditure of fuel used in England for the preparation of an inferior meal. A little charcoal under her _bain-marie_ does it all. The economy of time corresponds to the economy of fuel, for the mixture of viands required for the stew once put into the pot is left to itself until dinner-time, or at most an occasional stirring of fresh charcoal into the embers is all that is demanded. FOOTNOTE: [10] I have ventured to ascribe this lubricating function to the albumen which envelopes the fibres, though doubtful whether it is quite orthodox to do so. Its identity in composition with the synovial liquor of the joints, and the necessity for such lubricant, justify this supposition. It may act as a nutrient fluid at the same time. CHAPTER IX. CHEESE. I NOW come to a very important constituent of animal food, although it is not contained in beef, mutton, pork, poultry, game, fish, or any other organised animal substance, unless in egg yolk, as Lehmann states (see page 23). It is not even proved satisfactorily to exist in the blood, although it is somehow obtained from the blood by special glands at certain periods. I refer to _casein_, the substantial basis of cheese, which, as everybody knows, is the consolidated curd of milk.