"You have requested of me a new dish. And if you forget La Bruyère's sentence that 'all has been said, and we arrive too late by more than seven thousand years since man has lived and thought,' I may observe that cookery is older than literature, and that new dishes are as difficult to devise as new thoughts are to be born; it is only by new combinations in both that one may hope to achieve applause. Yet there is everything in a delicate touch in cooking, which is always more inherent than acquired, a connaissance of herbs and flavourings, and a natural love for the good things of the table, inspired by robust health and inheritance. With precisely the same components, no two artisans will produce the same results. There is an art even in the boiling of a potato, as there is in the blending of a salad, the gilding of a roast fowl, and a game-bird cooked _à point_. "Baron Brisse, you will recollect, has contributed an invaluable recipe for a _gigot rechauffé_, whereby a leg of mutton may be made to do duty for two consecutive days. Here is the mode to prepare a _gigot à la Richelieu_ which is not chronicled in the cook-books,--the allusion to the distinguished Cardinal referring both to its cardinal virtues and the colour of the sauce. It is unnecessary to state that this dish belongs to the dinner and not to the luncheon: "_Gigot de mouton à la Richelieu._ In the leg of mutton you have chosen, which should be that of a Pré-Salé or a South Down wether two years old and properly hung--the four-year-olds are too fat and are apt to taste tallowy--you will make a dozen incisions, placing in each its tithe or twelfth part of a clove of garlic. The _gigot_ will then be rubbed over with flour, salt, and a little cayenne. Then roast, basting thoroughly, and serve somewhat underdone, with a tomato sauce composed as follows: Take half a can of tomatoes, add half a clove of garlic, a small piece of bay-leaf, two cloves, a sprig of parsley, a stick of celery, two small carrots, and a small piece of raw ham. Cook half an hour, pass through a sieve; take a tablespoonful each of flour and butter and make a _roux_ in a separate stewpan; then add the tomato sauce, together with a little broth, salt and pepper, cooking until the proper consistency of the sauce is attained. On the sauce, to a great extent, depends the success of the dish, which, when well executed, is altogether too good to last for two consecutive days. I concede the merits of my deceased friend, the worthy baron; but try a _gigot de mouton à la Richelieu_! With this dish alone, including its vegetable accessories, and a salad, a bit of Rocquefort and a sound bottle of old Bordeaux, one may say with Joseph Délorme,-- "'_Jouissons, jouissons de la douce journée, Et ne la troublons pas, cette heure fortunée._'