Meat

It is a common error to declare that butcher’s meat in Italy is of inferior quality. The white short-horned bullocks of Perugia, for instance, can hold their own and rival the finest of our English bullocks, and veal in Italy, as in France, is usually superior to English veal. In Italy, too, they make far more extensive use of very young animals, whereas in this country the only “baby” animal which makes an appearance on the table is the sucking pig. But there we get “vitello di latte” (“sucking calf,” I suppose, is the correct translation), and “baby” lamb, the meat of which is only comparable to that of our very best young English chickens, both in delicacy and tenderness. The Italians excel in “plain” cooking—roasting, grilling and frying, as well as in more elaborate methods of cooking, and it is a mistake to think that, because the food in Italian hotels consists mainly of “made dishes” and rich stews, the whole of the Italian population feeds in this way.