The British housekeeper's book : being practical advice for purchasing the supplies of the house, and for brewing, baking, preserving, and pickling at home. To which are added directions for the management of the dairy, poultry-yard, laundry, and cellar / by J.H. Walsh, assisted by a committee of ladies.

  • Walsh, J. H. (John Henry), 1810-1888.
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The British housekeeper's book : being practical advice for purchasing the supplies of the house, and for brewing, baking, preserving, and pickling at home. To which are added directions for the management of the dairy, poultry-yard, laundry, and cellar / by J.H. Walsh, assisted by a committee of ladies. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    settles down into good habits, and will then often lay on fat, especially about the kidneys, to a considerable extent, in which state a haunch of it is superior to all other kinds of mutton, as far as my experience goes. Large flocks of these sheep are reared in Wales, and sheared there once, sometimes twice, after which they are driven into Here- fordshire, Worcestershire, and Shropshire, where they are fattened upon the high pastures, which are quite sufficiently good to serve as a change for the better for the Welsh sheep. The fore-quarter is strong and ill-flavoured, hut the haunch fully makes up for this deficiency. They usually weigh from nine to twelve pounds the quarter. South- down mutton ranks next to Welsh, and by some people is considered quite equal or even superior to it. I have no doubt that the average of Southdown mutton is superior to the average of Welsh; hut none that I ever ate could compare with a haunch of Welsh mutton, three years old, and fattened in the uplands of Worcestershire. Its fore- quarter, however, is vastly superior, and it is a much more profitable sheep in all ways. It may, therefore, be sold of first quality at a lower rate, though it requires at least two years, or a little more, to bring it to maturity. Next to them come the various crosses with the Southdown, some of which nearly equal it in point of flavour, though all are rather more coarse, and of a larger size. The Leicesters and Cotswolds, as well as the Shropshire sheep, produce good, large, useful family joints ; but they are not nearly so fine-flavoured as those first described, and their legs alone weigh from 12 lbs. to 16 lbs. a-piece. They lay on fat readily; but, like all long-woolled sheep, their mutton has a tendency to taste of the wool, especially in the end of the year. Some foreign sheep are imported from Spain and Germany; but their numbers are not great, and the quality is very inferior to our natve breeds. With these objectionable qualities in some over others, it is no wonder that the price of mutton should vary so much as it does, there being frequently, as in beef, a difference of one-quarter the price between the worst and best kinds at market. The breed, the age, and the sex, all influence the price; wethers being considered much superior to ewes, three or four-year-olds better than two, and this than one-and-a-half, and the Southdown breed and its crosses being in general more highly valued than any others. Ewe mutton in the autumn, when not more than two years old, is often quite equal to the average, and superior, when of a good breed, to wether mutton of an inferior kind. The age may be guessed by the hardness and whiteness of the outer layer of the bone when cut across, and by the