Southdowns afford the best mutton-chops.  The breast is mostly a roasting-piece, consisting of rib and shoulder, and is particularly good when cold.  When the piece is large, as of Southdown or Cheviot, the gristly part of the ribs may be divided from the true ribs, and helped separately.  The breast is an excellent piece in black-faced mutton, and suitable to small families, the shoulder being eaten cold, while the ribs and brisket are sweet and juicy when warm.  This piece also boils well; or, when corned for eight days, and served with onion sauce, with mashed turnip in it, there are few more savoury dishes at a farmer’s table.  The shoulder is separated before being dressed, and makes an excellent roast for family use, and may be eaten warm or cold, or corned and dressed as the breast mentioned above.  The shoulder is best from a large carcass of Southdown, Cheviot, or Leicester, the black-faced being too thin for the purpose; and it was probably because English mutton is usually large that the practice of removing it originated.  The neckpiece is partly laid bare by the removal of the shoulder, the fore-part being fitted for boiling and making into broth, and the best end for roasting or broiling into chops.  On this account this is a good family piece, and in such request among the tradesmen of London that they prefer it to any part of the hind-quarter.”—­(Vol. ii. p. 98.)

Nor is he less skilful in the humble food and cooking of the farm-labourer; indeed, he seems never satisfied until he fairly exhausts all the useful matter contained in every subject upon which he touches.  He not only breeds, and feeds, and kills, and cooks, but he does the latter with such relish, that we have several times fancied that we could actually see him eating his own mutton, beef, and pork.  And, whether he luxuriates over a roast of the back-ribs of mutton, “so sweet and so varied,” or complains that “the hotel-keepers have a trick of seasoning brown-soup, or rather beef-tea, with a few joints of tail, and passing it off for genuine ox-tail soup,”—­(vol. ii. p. 169,) or describes the “famous fat brose, for which Scotland has long been celebrated,” as formed by skimming off the fat when boiling the hough, pouring it upon oatmeal, and seasoning with pepper and salt; or indulges in the humbler brose of the ploughman in his bothy, he evidently enjoys every thing set before him so much, that we are sure he must lay on the fat kindly.  We should not wonder if he is himself already nicked; and we cannot more warmly testify our good wishes, than by expressing a hope, that, when he is fully ripe, the grim surgeon will operate upon him without pain, and kill him gently.

One of Mr. Stephens’s humbler dishes is the following:—­