If this is urged on the score of aesthetics, the ready reply will be,
"Oh! we can't give time here in America to go into niceties and French
whim-whams!" But the French mode of doing almost all practical things
is based on that true philosophy and utilitarian good sense which
characterize that seemingly thoughtless people. Nowhere is economy a
more careful study, and their market is artistically arranged to this
end. The rule is so to cut their meats that no portion designed to be
cooked in a certain manner shall have wasteful appendages which that
mode of cooking will spoil. The French soup-kettle stands ever ready
to receive the bones, the thin fibrous flaps, the sinewy and gristly
portions, which are so often included in our roasts or broilings, which
fill our plates with unsightly _debris_, and finally make an amount of
blank waste for which we pay our butcher the same price that we pay for
what we have eaten.
The dead waste of our clumsy, coarse way of cutting meats is immense.
For example, at the beginning of the season, the part of a lamb
denominated leg and loin, or hind-quarter, may sell for thirty cents
a pound.
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