Money can be spent to infinitely better advantage in the store, than by giving orders at the door, by phone or mail. Every housekeeper knows how large a proportion of the housekeeping money is swallowed up by the butcher's bill, so that with the meat item careful selection is most necessary in order to keep the bills within bounds.
In choosing meat of any kind the eye, the nose and the touch really are required, although it is not appetizing to see the purchaser use more than the eye.
Beef
In choosing meat it should be remembered that without being actually unwholesome, it varies greatly in quality, and often an inferior joint is to be preferred from a first class beast to a more popular cut from a second class animal. To be perfect the animal should be five or six years old, the flesh of a close even grain, bright red in color and well mixed with creamy white fat, the suet being firm and a clear white. Heifer meat is smaller in the bone and lighter in color than ox beef. Cow beef is much the same to look at as ox beef, though being older it is both coarser in the grain and tougher; bull beef, which is never seen however, in a first class butcher's may be recognized by the coarseness and dark color of the flesh, and also by a strong and almost rank smell.
Mutton
To be in perfection, mutton should be at least four, or better five or six years old, but sheep of this age are rarely if ever, met with now-a-days, when they are constantly killed under two years. To know the age of mutton, examine the breast bones; if these are all of a white gristly color the animal was four years old or over, while the younger it is the pinkier are the bones, which, in a sheep of under a year, are entirely red.
Good mutton should be of a clear dark red, the fat firm and white, and not too much of it; when touched the meat should feel crisp yet tender. If the fat is yellow and the lean flabby and damp, it is bad. A freshly scraped wooden skewer run into the meat along the bone will speedily enable anyone to detect staleness. For roasting mutton scarcely can be hung too long, as long as it is not tainted; but for boiling it must not be kept nearly so long or the meat will be of a bad color when cooked.
Lamb
The freshness of lamb is comparatively easy to distinguish, as if fresh the neck vein will be a bright blue, the knuckles stiff, and the eyes bright and full.