In the next place, there is a woeful lack of nicety in the butcher's
work of cutting and preparing meat. Who that remembers the neatly
trimmed mutton-chop of an English inn, or the artistic little circle
of lamb-chop fried in bread-crumbs coiled around a tempting centre of
spinach which may always be found in France, can recognize any family
resemblance to those dapper, civilized preparations, in these coarse,
roughly-hacked strips of bone, gristle, and meat which are commonly
called mutton-chop in America? There seems to be a large dish of
something resembling meat, in which each fragment has about two or
three edible morsels, the rest being composed of dry and burnt skin,
fat, and ragged bone.
Is it not time that civilization should learn to demand somewhat more
care and nicety in the modes of preparing what is to be cooked and
eaten? Might not some of the refinement and trimness which characterize
the preparations of the European market be with advantage introduced
into our own? The housekeeper who wishes to garnish her table with
some of those nice things is stopped in the outset by the butcher.
Except in our large cities, where some foreign travel may have created
the demand, it seems impossible to get much in this line that is
properly prepared.
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