Choice Cookery

these matters because I hope to cause my readers to _think_ about the recipes they will use, when they will see for themselves that even the finest cooking is not intricate nor in any way difficult. It requires intelligence and great care about details: no half-attention will do, any more than it will in any other thing we attempt, whether it be high art or domestic art. In making sauces or reading recipes for them it simplifies matters to remember that in savory sauces--by which I mean those served with meats or fish--there are what the French call the two "mother sauces," white sauce and brown; all others, with few exceptions, are modifications of these two; that is to say, bechamel is only white sauce made with white stock and cream instead of milk; Allemande is the same, only yolks of eggs replace the cream; and so on through the long list of sauces belonging to the blond variety. The simple brown sauce becomes the famous Chateaubriand by the addition of glaze (or very strong gravy) and a glass of white wine, and is the "mother" of many others equally fine. This being so, it will be seen that it is of the first importance that the making of these two "mother sauces" should be thoroughly understood, in order for the finer ones based on them to be successfully accomplished. It will clear the way for easy work if I here give the directions for making one of the most necessary and convenient aids to fine cooking--the above-named glaze. To have it in the house saves much worry and work. If the soup is not just so strong as we wish, the addition of a small piece of glaze will make it excellent; or we wish to make brown sauce, and have no stock, the glaze comes to our aid. To have stock in the house at all times is by no means easy in a small family, especially in summer; with glaze, which is solidified stock, one is independent of it. Six pounds of lean beef from the leg,