=Lard=: If you do not know, experimentally, good fresh lard, get leaf fat, try it out, taking care not to scorch it, and use the product as a standard. Lard must be firm, but not hard, even-textured throughout, and with almost no smell. Your nose, if permitted, will tell you if it is either scorched or rancid—the two unpardonable faults. From grain-fed pork it is clear white, with now and then a faint cream tinge. Keep in glass or bright tin, tightly closed, where it is cool and dark.
=Cheese=: As to choice of cheese one cannot dogmatize; so much depends on individual palates. Get the best you can afford of your chosen sort. Good cheese cuts grainy rather than waxy—it is not too greasy, reasonably solid, and free, of course, of mites or weevil. Cut a section from a whole cheese, then butter well the cut surfaces, cover with wax paper, and keep dark, dry, and cool. Wrap the cut-out section in wax paper likewise, and keep in a covered crock for daily use. Keep fancy, strong-smelling cheeses well wrapped in tinfoil, then in wax paper, and laid inside a covered crock, set in a cool place.
=Beef=: Prime beef comes only from well-fatted animals, neither too young nor too old. Fat and suet are white, inclining faintly to cream; lean a dark, healthy red, which becomes brighter by hanging. Very yellow fat and scarlet lean indicate a condition below first class. The meat should not cut dry when raw, but neither should liquid follow the cleaver.
=Mutton and Lamb=: The fat over the ribs is the best index of quality; if it is half an inch or more, the animal was thriving. The fat should be white with hardly a trace of yellow, the lean a fine purply red, not too deep. Follow your nose in buying all manner of butcher’s stuff, remembering cooking will never work the miracle of making sound the unsound. Good spring lamb has very white fat, with lean inclining to pinkish red. If the rib fat covers the whole surface, all is well. The caul fat should be in lumps as big as the finger end. A strong sheepy smell of either lamb or mutton shows animals badly dressed, or, in case of mutton, too old. Press a bare finger hard upon the outer surface; if the meat feels grainy there has probably been treatment with some preservative.