The thorough good cook

Is a steak a convertible term for a chop ? I ask ; because I have under my eye, as I am writing, dear old Hannah Glasse's recipe for " baked mutton chops." " Take," says Hannah, " a loin or neck of mutton ; cut it into steaks ; then take a quart of milk, six eggs beat up fine, and four spoonfuls of flour ; beat your flour and eggs with a little milk first, and then put the rest to it ; put in a little beaten ginger and a little salt ; pour all this over the steaks and send it to the oven. An hour and a half will bake it." It will be clear to the intelligent reader that this recipe for " baked mutton chops " is that which is at present known as the formula of " toad-in-the-hole." Who first gave that name to baked mutton chops ? But why do Hannah's " chops " become " steaks " when they are laid in the pie dish ? It strikes me, from the point of view of culinary philology, that the chop is something that must be smartly severed with a hatchet : whereas a steak is a piece of meat which is to be cut or sliced off the surface of a joint. Douglas Jerrold once put the case very neatly when, speaking of the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, he remarked that the poor lady had for supper her last steak, prior to her final " chop " the next morning. Chops are, to my thinking, an almost exclusively English dish. There are, I know, in New York certain taverns where you can get mutton chops ti à l'Anglaise — that is to say, thick chops with curly tails : and for the washing down of these professedly British dainties, real English half-and-half, which the Americans always carefully counsel their countrymen to pronounce " arf-an'-arf," is provided. Still, travelling through the States and dining at different hotels and restaurants you will often be asked if you will take mutton, pork, or beef '' steaks." It is, moreover, a curious circumstance that, although next to roast beef the mutton chop is held to be the most delectable item in the diet of John Bull, the chop, so called, is not to be found in very old English cookery-books. For example, in I)r. Salmon's " Family Dictionary and Household Companion," published in 1710, thirty-seven years before the appearance of Mrs. Glasse's work, no mention whatever occurs of chops. My theory is, that in the old English cuisine, chops were known as " collops " ; meaning slices or lumps of flesh that had been beaten prior to their being cooked. The word itself is derived from the English " clap," or the Danish " kloppen," to beat. You know that in the Book of Job allusion is made to the wicked man who " maketh collops of fat on his flanks " ; and Shakespeare speaks of a " collop of flesh " ; while old Fuller alludes to '' cut ■ ting good collops out of Crown land." On the other hand, my Scotch readers will know that in Caledonia collops mean minced beef cooked in a stew-pan and kept moving, so that the mince shall not become coagulated into lumps.