“You ladies scorn the flank,” he explained, as he held up a long thin cut of beef, “but the inside cut, with a pocket to be filled with poultry dressing, makes a fine pot roast. And now for the steaks,—”
Delmonico, porterhouse, sirloin and round—he explained their points clearly, and then a young bride brought up the question:
“What is minute steak?”
“You’ll have to ask the chef,” replied the butcher, nodding to a stout mustached man on the edge of the crowd. “We thought you might ask questions like this, so we brought him along.”
“Minute steak,” explained the chef, “is any good cut, without bone, sliced very thin. It gets its name from the short time required to cook it.”
Zip, the saw, knives and hatchet gleamed in and out of the red flesh, and the pages of Mrs. Larry’s note-book bristled with facts and figures. When the demonstration was over, she snapped a rubber band around the little book, thrust it into her bag and walked thoughtfully to the elevator.
“Did you enjoy it, honey?” Teresa Moore linked arms with Mrs. Larry and rang for the elevator.
“Well, if there’s any enjoyment in learning how little you know, I must have had a perfectly splendid time!” replied Mrs. Larry, not without slight sarcasm.
“Fine! I felt the same way—once. Now go a-marketing while it is all fresh in your mind. Put the fear of God in the heart of your butcher. You won’t have to do it but once, I venture to assure you.”
“I will,” said Mrs. Larry firmly, as they parted at the corner. Then suddenly she stopped and stared in dismay at an unoffending, overtrimmed pincushion in a shop window. Memory turned a blur of red beef, white bone and creamy yellow fat.