them in a box from a provision merchant, as the _Hausfrau_
herself does nowadays.

English people often say that there is no good meat to be had in
Germany. I would say that there is no good mutton, and a great deal of
poor coarse beef. But the _Filetbraten_ that you can get from the best
butchers is excellent. It is a long roll of undercut of beef, so long
that it seems to be sold by the yard. If you cook it in the English
way, says my German cookery book, you rub it well with salt and pepper
and baste it with butter; while the gravy is made with flour,
mushrooms, cream, and extract of beef. I should like to see the
expression of the English plain cook if she was told to baste her beef
with butter and make her gravy for it with mushrooms. I once came back
from Germany with a new idea for gravy, and tried it on a cook who
seemed to think that gravy was made by upsetting a kettle over a joint
and then adding lumps of flour.

"My sister's cook always puts an onion in the tin with a joint," I
said tentatively, for I was not very hopeful. I know that there is
always some insuperable objection to anything not consecrated by
tradition.

"It gives the gravy a flavour," I went on,--"not a strong flavour"--

I stopped. I waited for the objection.

"We couldn't do that HERE," said the cook.

"Why not?--We have tins and we have onions."

"It would spoil the dripping. What could I do with dripping as tasted
of onion?"

I had never thought of that, and so I had never asked my sister what
was done in her household with dripping as tasted with onion.

"I should think," I said slowly, "that it could be used to baste the
next joint."

"Then that would taste of onion," said the cook, "and I should have no
dripping when I wanted it."

I have always thought dripping a dull subject, and I know that it is
an explosive one, so I said nothing more. I went on instead to
describe a piece of beef stewed in its own juices on a bed of chopped
vegetables. We actually tried that, and when it was cold it tasted
agreeably of the vegetables, and was as tender to carve as butter.

"How did you like the German beef?" I said to an Englishwoman who had
been with me a great many years.

"I didn't like it at all, M'm."

"But it was so tender."

"Yes, M'm, it made me creep," she said.

So this chapter is really of no use from one point of view. You may
hear what queer things benighted people like the Germans eat and
drink, but you will ne