Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

NEW SYSTEM
OF
DOMESTIC COOKERY,
FORMED UPON
PRINCIPLES OF ECONOMY,
AND ADAPTED TO THE USE OF
PRIVATE FAMILIES.

BY A LADY.

BOSTON:

Published by William Andrews, No. 1, Cornhill.

Sold by Cushing & Appleton, Salem; Thomas & Whipple, Newburyport; Charles Peirce, Portsmouth; Daniel Johnson, Portland; William Wilkinson, Providence; Increase Cooke & Co. Newhaven; Peter A. Mesier and Brisban & Brannan, Newyork; Samuel F. Bradford and John Conrad & Co. Philadelphia, & E. Morford, Charleston, S. C.

1807.

S. Etheridge, Printer, Charleston.

ADVERTISEMENT.

As the directions which follow were intended for the conduct of the families of the authoress’s own daughters, and for the arrangement of their table, so as to unite a good figure with proper economy, she has avoided all excessive luxury, such as essence of ham, and that wasteful expenditure of large quantities of meat for gravy, which so greatly contributes to keep up the price, and is no less injurious to those who eat, than to those whose penury bids them abstain. Many receipts are given for things which, being in daily use, the mode of preparing them may be supposed too well known to require a place in a cookery book; yet how rarely do we meet with fine melted butter, good toast and water, or well made coffee! She makes no apology for minuteness in some articles, or for leaving others unnamed, because she writes not for professed cooks. This little work would have been a treasure to herself, when she first set out in life, and she therefore hopes it may be useful to others. In that idea it is given to the public, and as she will receive from it no emolument, so she trusts it will escape without censure.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Miscellaneous Observations
FOR THE USE OF
THE MISTRESS OF A FAMILY;
BY WHICH MUCH MONEY WILL BE SAVED, AND THE GENERAL APPEARANCE GREATLY IMPROVED.

The mistress of a family should always remember that the welfare and good management of the house depend on the eye of the superior; and consequently that nothing is too trifling for her notice, whereby waste may be avoided; and this attention is of more importance, now that the price of every necessary of life is increased to an enormous degree.

If a lady has never been accustomed, while single, to think of family management, let her not upon that account fear that she cannot attain it; she may consult others who are more experienced, and acquaint herself with the necessary quantities of the several articles of family expenditure in proportion to the number it consists of.

A minute account of the annual income, and the times of payment, should be taken in writing; likewise an estimate of the supposed amount of each article of expense; and those who are early accustomed to calculations on domestic articles, will acquire so accurate a knowledge of what their establishment requires, as will give them the happy medium between prodigality and parsimony, without acquiring the character of meanness.

Ready money should be paid for all such things as come not into weekly bills; and the best places for purchasing be attended to. In some articles a discount of five per cent. is allowed in London, and other large cities; and those who thus pay are usually best served. Under the idea of buying cheap, many people go to new shops; but it is safest to deal with people of established credit, who do not dispose of bad goods by underselling.

To make people wait for their money injures them greatly, besides that a higher price must be charged: perhaps the irregularity of payment may have much evil influence on the price of various articles, and contribute to the destruction of many families, in gradation downwards.

It is very necessary for a woman to be informed of the prices and goodness of all articles in common use, and of the best times, as well as places, for purchasing them. She should also be acquainted with the comparative prices of provisions, in order that she may be able to substitute those that are most reasonable, when they will answer as well, for others of the same kind, but which are more costly. A false notion of economy leads many to purchase as bargains what is not wanted, and sometimes never is used. Were this error avoided, more money would remain for other purposes. Some things are better for keeping, and, being in constant consumption, should be laid in accordingly; such as paper, soap, and candles. Of these more hereafter.

A proper quantity of household articles should be always ready, and more bought in before the others be consumed, to prevent inconvenience, especially in the country.

A bill of parcels and receipts should be required, even if the money be paid at the time of purchase; and, to avoid mistakes, let the goods be compared with these when brought home.

Though it is very disagreeable to suspect any one’s honesty, and perhaps mistakes have been unintentional, yet it is prudent to weigh meat, sugars, &c. when brought in, and compare with the charge. The butcher should be ordered to send the weight with the meat, and the cook to file these checks, to be examined when the weekly bill shall be delivered.

A ticket should be given by the cook for each loaf, which will on return give the number to be paid for.

Thus regularly conducted, the exact state of money affairs will be known with ease; for it is delay of payment that occasions confusion.

Accounts should be regularly kept, and not the smallest articles omitted to be entered; and if balanced every week and month, the income and outgoings will be ascertained with facility, and their proportions to other be duly observed. Some people approve of keeping in separate purses the money for different purposes, as domestic articles, clothes, pocket, education of children, &c.

Whichever way accounts be kept, some certain method should be adopted and strictly adhered to.

Many families have owed their prosperity full as much to the conduct and propriety of female management, as to the knowledge and activity of the father.

Those who are served with brewer’s beer, or any other thing not paid for on delivery, should have a book for entering the date; which will not only prevent overcharges, but at one view give the annual consumption.

It is much to be feared, that for the waste of many of the good things that God has given for our use, not abuse, the mistress and servants of great houses will hereafter be called to a strict account.

Some part of every person’s fortune should be devoted to charity; by which “a pious woman will build up her house before God, while she that is foolish (i. e. lends nothing to the Lord) pulls it down with her hands.” No one can complain of the want of gifts to the poor in this land; but there is a mode of relief which would add greatly to their comfort, and which being prepared from superfluity, and such materials as are often thrown away, the expense would not be felt. In the latter part of this work some hints for preparing the above are given.

By good hours, especially early breakfast, a family is more regular, and much time is saved. If orders be given soon in the morning, there will be more time to execute them; and servants, by doing their work with ease, will be more equal to it, and fewer will be necessary.

It is worthy of notice, that the general expense will be reduced, if every thing be kept in its proper place, applied to its proper use, and mended, when the nature of an accident will allow, as soon as broken.

An inventory of furniture, linen, and china, should be kept, and the things examined by it twice a year, or oftener, if there be a change of servants; into each of whose care the articles used by him or her, should be intrusted, with a list, as is done with plate. Tickets of parchment with the family name, numbered, and specifying what bed it belongs to, should be sewed on each feather bed, bolster, pillows, and blankets.

Many well meaning servants are ignorant of the best means of managing, and thereby waste as much as would maintain a small family, besides causing the mistress of the house much chagrin by their irregularity; and many families, from a want of method, have the appearance of chance rather than of regular system. To avoid which the following hints may be useful.

All things likely to be wanted should be in readiness; sugars of different qualities should be kept broken, currants washed, picked and dry in a jar; spice pounded, &c.

Where regular noonings or suppers are used (and in every house some preparation is necessary for accidental visitors), care should be taken to have such things in readiness as may be proper for either; a list of several will be subjoined, a change of which will be agreeable, and if properly managed will be attended with no great expense.

Every article should be kept in that place best suited to it, as much waste may thereby be avoided, viz.

Vegetables will keep best on a stone floor if the air be excluded; meat in a cold dry place; sugar and sweetmeats require a dry place; so does salt; candles cold, but not damp; dried meats, hams, &c. the same; all sorts of seeds for puddings, saloop, rice, &c. should be close covered to preserve from insects. Flour should be kept in a cool perfectly dry room, and the bag being tied should be changed upside down and back every week, and well shaken. Soap should be cut with a wire or twine, in pieces that form a long square, when first brought in, and kept out of the air two or three weeks; for if it dry quick, it will crack, and when wet break. Put it on a shelf, leaving a space between, and let it grow hard gradually. Thus, it will save a full third in the consumption. Cheese should be washed and wiped if you wish to preserve it sound, and the shelves be washed; changing the place every three or four weeks; but if it be wanted to ripen, a damp cellar will bring it forward.

Bread is now so heavy an article of expense that all waste should be guarded against, and having it cut in the room will tend much to prevent it; since the scarcity in 1795 and 1800, that custom has been much adopted. It should not be cut until a day old; earthen pans and covers keep it best.

Rolls, muffins, or any sort of bread, may be made to taste new when two or three days old, by dipping it uncut in water, and baking afresh or toasting.

Eggs may be bought cheapest when the hens first begin to lay in the spring, before they sit; in Lent and at Easter they become dear. They may be preserved fresh by dipping them in boiling water, and instantly taking them out, or by oiling the shell; either of which ways is to prevent the air passing through it. They should be kept on shelves with small holes to receive one in each, and be turned every other day.

Carrots, parsnips, and beet roots, should be kept in sand for winter use, and neither they nor potatoes be cleared from the earth.

Store onions preserve best hung up in a dry cold room.

Straw to lay apples on should be quite dry, to prevent a musty taste.

Large pears should be tied up by the stalk.

Tarragon gives the flavour of French cookery, and in high gravies is a great improvement; but should be added only a short time before serving.

Basil, savory, and knotted marjoram, or London thyme, to be used when herbs are ordered; but with discretion, as they are very pungent.

Celery seeds give the flavour of the plant to soups.

Parsley should be cut close to the stalks, and dried on tins in a very cool oven: it preserves its flavour and colour, and is very useful in winter.

Artichoke bottoms which have been slowly dried, should be kept in paper bags; and truffles, morels, lemonpeel, &c. in a dry place ticketed.

In towns, poultry being usually sold ready picked, the feathers, which may occasionally come in in small quantities, are neglected: but orders should be given to put them into a tub free from damp, and as they dry to change them into paper bags, a few in each; they should hang in a dry kitchen to season; fresh ones must not be added to those in part dried, or they will occasion a musty smell, but they should go through the same process. In a few months they will be fit to add to beds, or to make pillows, without the usual mode of drying them in a cool oven, which may be pursued if they are wanted before five or six months.

The best means to preserve blankets from moths is to fold and lay them under the featherbeds that are in use, and they should be shaken occasionally. When soiled, they should be washed, not scoured.

Candles made in cool weather are best; and when their price, and that of soap, which rise and fall together, is likely to be higher, it will be prudent to lay in the stock of both. This information the chandler can always give; they are better for keeping eight or ten months, and will not injure for two years, if properly placed in the cool; and there are few articles that better deserve care in buying, and allowing a due quantity of, according to the size of the family.

The price of starch depends upon that of flour; the best will keep good in a dry warm room for some years; therefore when bread is cheap, it may be bought to advantage, and covered close.

Pickles and sweetmeats should be preserved from air; where the former are much used, small jars of each should be taken from the stock jar, to prevent frequent opening.

Some of the lemons and oranges used for juice should be pared, first to preserve the peel dry; some should be halved, and when squeezed, the pulp cut out, and the outsides dried for grating. If for boiling in any liquid, the first way is best. When these fruits are cheap, a proper quantity should be bought, and prepared as hereafter directed, especially by those who live in the country, where they cannot always be had; and they are perpetually wanted in cookery.

When whites of eggs are used for jelly, or other purposes, contrive to have pudding, custard, &c. to employ the yelks also. Should you not want them for several hours, beat them up with a little water, and put them in a cool place, or they will be hardened and useless. It was a mistake of old, to think that the whites made cakes and puddings heavy; on the contrary, if beaten long and separately, they contribute greatly to give lightness, are an advantage to paste, and make a pretty dish beaten with fruit, to set in cream, &c.

If copper utensils be used in the kitchen, the cook should be charged to be very careful not to let the tin be rubbed off; and to have them fresh done when the least defect appears, and never to put by any soup, gravy, &c. in them, or any metal utensil; stone and earthen vessels should be provided for those purposes, as likewise plenty of common dishes, that the table set may not be used to put by cold meat.

Vegetables soon sour, and corrode metals and glazed red ware, by which a strong poison is produced.

Vinegar by its acidity does the same, the glazing being of lead or arsenic.

In hot weather, when it is difficult to preserve milk from becoming sour, and spoiling the cream, it may be kept perfectly sweet by scalding the new milk very gently, without boiling, and setting it by in the earthen dish or pan that it is done in. This method is pursued in Devonshire, and the milk is not skimmed under twenty four hours, and would equally answer in small quantities for coffee, tea, &c.

Cream already skimmed may be kept twenty four hours if scalded without sugar, and by adding to it as much powdered lump sugar as shall make it pretty sweet will be good two days, keeping it in a cool place. Syrup of cream may be preserved as above in the proportion of a pound and quarter of sugar to a pint of perfectly fresh cream, keep it in a cool place two or three hours; then put it in one or two ounce phials, and cork it close. It will keep good thus for several weeks, and will be found very useful on voyages.

To cool liquors in hot weather, dip a cloth in cold water, and wrap it round the bottle two or three times, then place it in the sun; renew the process once or twice.

The best way of scalding fruits, or boiling vinegar, is in a stone jar on a hot iron hearth, or by putting the vessel into a saucepan of water, called a waterbath.

The beautiful green given to pickles, formerly was made by the use of bell mettle, brass, or copper, and consequently very injurious to the stomach.

If chocolate, coffee, jelly, gruel, bark, &c. be suffered to boil over, the strength is lost.

Marbles boiled in custard, or any thing likely to burn, will, by shaking them in the saucepan, prevent it.

Gravies or soups, put by, should be daily changed into fresh scalded pans. When there is fear of gravy meat being spoiled before it be wanted, season it well, and lightly fry it, which will preserve it two days longer; but the gravy is best when the juices are fresh. A receipt for gravy that will keep a week is given under the article of Sauces.

The cook should be encouraged to be careful of coals and cinders: for the latter there is a new contrivance to sift, without dispersing the dust of the ashes, by means of a covered tin bucket.

Small coal wetted makes the strongest fire for the back, but must remain untouched until it cake. Cinders, lightly wet, give a great degree of heat, and are better than coal for furnaces, ironing stoves, and ovens.

The cook should be charged to take care of jelly bags, tapes for the collared things, &c. which, if not perfectly scalded, and kept dry, give an unpleasant flavour when next used.

Cold water thrown on cast iron, when hot, will cause it to crack.

Hard water spoils the colour of vegetables; a pinch of pearlash, or salt of wormwood, will prevent that effect.

When sirloins of beef, loins of veal or mutton, come in, part of the suet may be cut off for puddings, or to clarify; dripping will baste every thing as well as butter, fowls and game excepted; and for kitchen pies, nothing else should be used.

The fat off a neck or loin of mutton makes a far lighter pudding than suet.

Meat and vegetables that the frost has touched should be soaked in cold water two or three hours before they are used, or more if much iced. When put into hot water or to the fire until thawed, no heat will dress them properly.

Meat should be well examined, when it comes in warm weather; and if flies have touched it, the part must be cut off, and then well washed. In the height of summer, it is a very safe way to let meat that is to be salted lie an hour in the coldest water, rubbing it well there in any part likely to have been flyblown; then wipe it perfectly dry, and have ready salt, and rub it thoroughly into every part, leaving a handful over it besides. Turn it every day, and rub the pickle in, which will make it ready for the table in three or four days; if it is desired to be very much corned, wrap it in a well floured cloth, having rubbed it previously with salt. The latter method will corn fresh beef fit for table the day it comes in; but it must be put into the pot when the water boils.

If the weather permits, meat eats much better for hanging two or three days before it be salted.

The water in which meat has boiled makes an excellent soup for the poor, when vegetables, oatmeal or pease, are added, and should not be cleared from the fat.

Roast beef bones, or shank bones of ham, make fine pease soup, and should be boiled with the pease the day before eaten, that the fat may be removed.

The mistress of the house will find many great advantages in visiting her larder daily, before she orders her bill of fare: she will see what things require dressing, and thereby guard against their being spoiled. Many articles may be re-dressed in a different form from that in which they were first served, and improve the appearance of the table without increasing expense. Many dishes require to be made of dressed meat or fowls. Directions for several are hereafter given.

In every sort of provisions, the best of the kind goes farthest; cutting out most advantageously, and affording most nourishment. Round of beef, fillet of veal, and leg of mutton, bear a higher price; but having more solid meat, deserve the preference. It is worth notice, however, that those joints which are inferior may be dressed as palatably, and being cheaper, ought to be bought in turn; and, when weighed with the prime pieces, the price of the latter is reduced.

In loins of meat, the long pipe which runs by the bone should be taken out, being apt to taint; as likewise the kernels of beef. Rumps and aitchbones of beef are often bruised by the blows the drovers give, and that part always taints: avoid purchasing such.

The shank bones of mutton should be saved, and, after soaking and brushing, may be added to give richness to gravies or soups; and they are particularly nourishing for the sick.

The feet of pork make various good dishes, and should be cut off before the legs be cured. Observe the same of the ears.

Calves’ tongues, salted, make a more useful dish than when dressed with the brains, which may be served without.

Some people like neats’ tongues cured with the root, in which case they look much larger; but should the contrary be approved, the root must be cut off close to the gullet, next to the tongue, but without taking away the fat under the tongue. The root must be soaked in salt and water, and extremely well cleaned before it be dressed as hereafter directed: and the tongue laid in salt for a day and night before pickled.

Great attention is requisite in salting meat; and in the country, where great quantities are cured, it is of still more importance. Beef and pork should be well sprinkled, and a few hours after hung to drain, before it be rubbed with the preserving salts; which mode, by cleansing the meat from the blood, tends to keep it from tasting strong. It should be turned daily, and if wanted soon, rubbed. A salting tub, or lead, may be used, and a cover should fit close. Those who use a good deal of salt meat will find it answer well to boil up the pickle, skim, and, when cold, pour it over meat that has been sprinkled and drained. Salt is so greatly increased in price, from the heavy duties, as to require additional care, and the brine ought not to be thrown away, as is the practice of some, after once using.

In some families great loss is sustained by the spoiling of meat. The best mode to keep that which is to be eaten unsalted is, as before directed, to examine it well; wipe it daily, and pound some charcoal, and throw over it. If meat is brought from a distance in warm weather, the butcher should be charged to cover it close, and bring it early in the morning; but even then, if it be kept on the road, while he serves the customers who are nearest to him, it will probably be flyblown. This is most frequent in the country.

Mutton will keep long by washing with vinegar, and peppering the broad end of the leg; if any damp appears, wipe it immediately. If rubbed with salt lightly, it will not eat the worse. Boiled in seawater, is by some much admired.

Game is often brought in when not likely to keep a day, in the cook’s apprehension; yet may be preserved two or three days, if wanted, by the following method:

If birds, (woodcocks and snipes excepted, which must not be drawn) draw them, pick, and take out the crop; wash them in two or three waters, and rub them with a little salt. Have ready a large saucepan of boiling water, and plunge them in one by one; boil each five minutes, moving it, that the water may go through them. When all are finished, hang them by the heads in a cold place; when drained, pepper the inside and necks. When to be roasted, wash to take off the pepper. The most delicate birds, even grouse, may be kept this way, if not putrid. Birds that live by suction, &c. bear being high; it is probable that the heat might cause them to taint more, as a free passage for the scalding water could not be obtained. Hares ought not to be paunched in the field, as they keep longer, and eat much better without. But that is seldom in the cook’s power to guard against. She should take out the liver and heart, and parboil the former to keep for stuffing, wipe the inside every day, quite dry, put a bunch of parsley, or some pepper, or both; thus it will keep long, especially if the seasoning be rubbed early on the inside to prevent any mustiness of taste, which often is communicated to the stuffing by this omission, and want of extreme nicety in washing it in water and vinegar before it be dressed, while the outside has been preserved fresh by the skin. If old, a hare should be kept as long as possible, except for soup, or jugging; and after soaking, in vinegar, be well larded.

Freshwater fish has often a muddy taste; to take off which, soak it in strong salt and water, or, if of a size to bear it, give it a scald in the same, after extremely good cleaning and washing. The latter for carp or eels.

Turbot will hang three or four days, if lightly rubbed with salt, and be in quite as great perfection as the first day.

Fish may sometimes be bought reasonably by taking more than can be dressed at once; when recourse may be had to pickling, potting, or frying, to keep for stewing a succeeding day.

When thunder or hot weather causes beer to turn sour, half, or a whole teaspoonful of salt of wormwood should be put into a jug, and let the beer be drawn in it as small a time as possible before it be drank.

If the subject of servants be thought ill timed in a book upon family arrangement, it must be by those who do not recollect that the regularity and good management of the heads will be insufficient, if not seconded by those who are to execute orders. It behoves every person to be extremely careful who they take into their employ; to be very minute in investigating the character they receive; and equally cautious to be scrupulously just in giving one to others. Were this attended to, many bad people would be incapacitated from doing mischief, by abusing the trust reposed in them. And it may be fairly asserted, that the robbery, or waste (which is but a milder epithet) of an unfaithful servant, will be laid to the charge of the master or mistress, who, knowing such faults in him, or even having only well grounded suspicions, is led by entreaty or false pity, to slide him into another place. To refuse countenance to the evil, is to encourage the good servant; such as are honest, frugal, and attentive to their duties, should be liberally rewarded: and such discrimination would encourage merit, and inspire servants with a zeal to acquit themselves with fidelity.

On the other side it may be proper to observe, that a retributive justice usually marks persons in that station sooner or later even in this world. Those who are extravagant and idle in their servitude, are ill prepared for the industry and sobriety on which their own future welfare much depends; their faults, and the attendant punishment, come home when they have families of their own, and sometimes much sooner. They will see their wickedness or folly in the conduct of their offspring, whom they must not expect to be better than the examples that are set them.

It was the observation of a sensible woman, that she could always read the fate of her servants when they married from her; those who had been faithful and industrious in her service, continued their good habits in their own families, and became respectable members of the community; those who had been unfaithful servants, never were successful, and not unfrequently were reduced to the parish.

The manner of carving is not only a very essential knowledge in point of doing the honours of the table with grace, but makes a great difference in the family consumption; and, though in large companies, a lady is so much assisted as to make the art of less consequence, yet she should not fail to acquaint herself with an attainment of which she must daily feel the want. Some people haggle meat so as not to be able to help six times from a large tongue, or a piece of beef. It is to be observed that a thin sharp carving knife, and with a very little strength to the management of it, will cut deep thin slices, cause the joint to look neatly, and leave sufficient for a second helping, instead of that disgusting appearance which is sometimes observable. Habit alone can make people carve, or do the honours of a table well; for those who have not had practice, there are very good directions in a little book of Trusler’s.

In the following, and indeed all other receipts, though the quantities may be as accurately set down as possible, yet much must be left to the discretion of the person who uses them. The different taste of people requires more or less of the flavour of spices, garlic, butter, &c. which can never be directed by general rules; and if the cook has not a good taste, and attention to that of her employers, not all the ingredients with which nature or art can furnish her, will give an exquisite relish to her dishes. The proper articles should be at hand, and she must proportion them until the true zest be obtained.

DOMESTIC COOKERY.

FISH.

To boil Turbot.

The turbot kettle must be of a proper size, and in the nicest order. Set the fish in cold water to cover it completely: throw a handful of salt and one glass of vinegar into it; let it gradually boil; be very careful that there fall no blacks, but skim it well, and preserve the beauty of the colour.

Serve it garnished with a complete fringe of curled parsley, lemon, and horseradish.

The sauce must be the finest lobster, and anchovy butter, and plain butter, served plentifully in separate tureens.

To stew Lamprey, as at Worcester.

After cleaning the fish carefully, remove the cartilage which runs down the back, and season with a small quantity of cloves, mace, nutmeg, pepper, and pimento. Put it in a small stewpot, with very strong beef gravy, with port and equal quantity of Madeira or sherry wine.

It must be covered; stew till tender; then take out the lamprey and keep it hot, while you boil up the liquor with two or three anchovies chopped, and some flour and butter: strain the gravy through a sieve, and add lemon juice and some made mustard. Serve with sippets of bread and horseradish.

Eels, soals, and carp, done the same way, are excellent. When there is spawn, it must be fried and put round.

Note. Cyder instead of white wine will do in common.

Eel Pye.

Cut the eels in lengths of two or three inches: season with pepper and salt, and place in the dish, with some bits of butter and a little water, and cover it with paste.

Spitchcock Eels.

Take a large one, leave the skin on, cut it in pieces of four inches long, open it on the belly side, and clean it nicely: wipe it dry, and then wet it with a beaten egg, and strew it over on both sides with chopped parsley, pepper, salt, a very little sage, and a bit of mace pounded fine, and mixed with the seasoning. Rub the gridiron with a bit of suet, and broil the fish of a fine colour.

Serve with anchovy and butter for sauce.

Fried Eels.

If small, they should be curled round and fried, being first dipped in egg and crumbs of bread.

Boiled Eels.

The small ones are preferable. Do them in a small quantity of water, with a good deal of parsley, which should be served up with them and the liquor.

Serve chopped parsley and butter for sauce.

Eel Broth,

Very nourishing for the sick.

As above; but to be stewed two hours, and an onion and peppercorns added: salt to taste.

Collared Eels.

Bone a large eel, but do not skin it: mix pepper, salt, mace, pimento, and a clove or two, in the finest powder, and rub over the whole inside: roll it tight, and bind it with a coarse tape. Boil it in salt and water till enough; then add vinegar, and when cold, keep the collar in pickle. Serve it whole, or in slices, garnished with parsley. Chopped sage, parsley, and a little thyme, knotted marjorum, and savory, mixed with the spices, greatly improve the taste.

Perch and Tench.

Put them in cold water, boil them carefully, and serve with melted butter and soy.

Mackerel.

Boiled, and served with butter and fennel.

Broiled, being split and sprinkled with herbs, pepper and salt; or stuffed with the same, crumbs and chopped fennel.

Collared, as eel above.

Potted. Clean, season, and bake them in a pan, with spice, bayleaves, and some butter: when cold, lay them in a potting pot, and cover with butter.

Pickled. Boil them; then boil some of the liquor, a few peppers, bayleaves, and some vinegar: when cold, pour it over them.

To pickle Mackerel, called Caveach.

Clean and divide, then cut each side in three; or, leaving them undivided, cut each fish in five or six pieces. To six large mackerel, take near an ounce of pepper, two nutmegs, a little mace, four cloves, and a handful of salt, all in finest powder; mix, and, making holes in each bit of fish, thrust the seasoning into them; rub each piece with some of it; then fry them brown in oil; let them stand till cold, then put them into a stone jar, and cover with vinegar: if to keep long, pour oil on the top. This done, they may be preserved for months.

To bake Pike.

Scale it, and open as near the throat as you can; then stuff it with the following: grated bread, herbs, anchovies, oysters, suet, salt, pepper, mace, half a pint of cream, four yelks of eggs; mix all, over the fire, till it thickens, then put it into the fish, sew it up. Butter should be put over in little bits: bake it. Serve sauce of gravy, butter, and anchovy. Note. If, in helping a pike, the back and belly be slit up, and each slice be gently drawn downwards, there will be fewer bones given.

Salmon to boil.

Clean it carefully, boil it gently, and take it out of the water as soon as done; and let the water be warm if the fish be split.

Shrimp or anchovy sauce.

Salmon to pickle.

Boil as above, take the fish out and boil the liquor with bayleaves, peppercorns and salt; add vinegar when cold, and pour over the fish.

Salmon to broil.

Cut slices about an inch thick; season, and put them into papers; twist them, and broil gently. Serve in the papers. Anchovy sauce.

Salmon to pot.

Take a large piece, scale and wipe, but do not wash it; salt it very well: let it lie till the salt be melted and drained from it, then season with beaten mace, cloves, and whole peppers. Lay in a few bayleaves, put it close in a pan, and cover it over with butter, and bake it. When well done, drain it from the gravy, put it in the pots to keep; and when cold, cover with clarified butter.

Thus you may do any firm fish.

Salmon to dry.

Cut the fish down, take out the inside and roe. Rub the whole with common salt, after scaling it; let it hang to drain twenty four hours. Pound three or four ounces of saltpetre, according to the size of the fish, two ounces of bay salt, and two ounces of coarse sugar: rub these, when mixed well, into the Salmon, and lay it on a large dish or tray two days, then rub it well with common salt, and in twenty four hours more it will be fit to dry: but you must dry it well after draining. Either hang in a wood chimney, or in a dry place, keeping it open with two small sticks.

Lobsters to pot.

Boil them half, pick out the meat, cut into small bits: season with mace, white pepper, nutmeg, and salt: press close into a pot and cover with butter: bake half an hour: put the spawn in. When cold, take the lobster out, and with a little of the butter put it into the pots. Beat the other butter in a mortar with some of the spawn; then mix that coloured butter with as much as will be sufficient to cover the pots, and strain it. Cayenne may be added, if approved.

Another way, as at Wood’s Hotel.

Take out the meat as whole as you can; split the tail and remove the gut; if the inside be not watery, add that. Season with mace, nutmeg, white pepper, salt, and a clove or two, in finest powder. Lay a little fine butter at the bottom of a pan, and the lobster smooth over it, with bayleaves between: cover it with butter and bake it gently. When done, pour the whole on the bottom of a sieve, and with a fork lay the pieces into potting pots, some of each sort with the seasoning about it. When cold, pour clarified butter over, but not hot. It will be good next day; or highly seasoned, and thick covered with butter, will keep some time.

The potted lobster may be used cold, or as a fricassee, with a cream sauce, when it looks very nicely, and eats excellently, especially if there be spawn.

Mackerel, herrings, and trout, are good potted as above.

Stewed Lobster, as a very high Relish.

Pick the lobster, put the berries into a dish that has a lamp, and rub them down with a bit of butter, two spoonfuls of any sort of gravy, one of soy or walnut catsup, a little salt and Cayenne, and a spoonful of port. Stew the lobster cut in bits with the gravy as above. It must be dressed at table, and eaten immediately.

Lobster Pie.

Boil two lobsters, or three small; take out the tails, cut them in two, take out the gut, cut each in four pieces and lay them in a small dish. Put in then the meat of the claws, and that you have picked out of the body; pick off the furry parts from the latter, and take out the lady; then take the spawn, beat it in a mortar, likewise all the shells. Set them on to stew with some water, two or three spoonfuls of vinegar, pepper, salt, and some pounded mace. A large piece of butter, rolled in flour, must be added when the goodness of the shells is obtained. Give a boil or two and pour into the dish strained: strew some crumbs over, and put a paste over all. Bake slowly, but only till the paste be done.

Curry of Lobsters or Prawns.

When taken out of the shells, simmer them as above.

Buttered Lobsters.

Pick the meat out; cut it and warm with a little weak brown gravy, nutmeg, salt, pepper, and butter, with a little flour. If done white, a little white gravy and cream.

Hot Crab.

Pick the meat out of a crab, clear the shell from the head, then put the former, with a very small bit of nutmeg, salt, pepper, a bit of butter, crumbs of bread, and three spoonfuls of vinegar, into the shell again, and set it before the fire. You may brown it with a salamander.

Dry toast should be served to eat it upon.

To dress Red Herrings.

Choose those that are large and moist; cut them open, and pour some boiling small beer over them, to soak half an hour. Drain them dry, and make them just hot through before the fire; then rub some cold butter over them and serve. Egg sauce, or buttered eggs and mashed potatoes, should be served with them.

Baked Herrings or Sprats.

Wash and drain without wiping them. Season with Jamaica pepper in fine powder, salt, a whole clove or two: lay them in a pan with plenty of black pepper, an onion, and a few bayleaves. Put half vinegar and half small beer, enough to cover them. Put paper over the pan, and bake in a slow oven. If you like, throw saltpetre over them the night before, to make them look red. Gut, but do not open them.

To smoke Herrings.

Clean and lay them in salt, and a little saltpetre one night; then hang them on a stick, through the eyes, on a row. Have ready an old cask, on which put some sawdust, and in the midst of it a heater red hot; over the smoke fix the stick, and let them remain twenty four hours.

Fried Herrings.

Serve them of a light brown, and onions sliced and fried.

Broiled Herrings.

Floured first, and done of a good colour. Plain butter for sauce. They are very good potted like mackerel.

Soals.

If boiled, they must be served with great care to look perfectly white, and should be much covered with parsley.

If fried, dip them in egg, and cover them with fine crumbs of bread. Set on a fryingpan that is just large enough, and put into it a large quantity of fresh lard or dripping; boil it, and immediately slip the fish into it. Do them of a fine brown. When enough, take them out carefully, and lay them upon a dish turned under side uppermost, and placed slantingly before the fire to drain off the fat. If you wish them to be particularly nice, lay them on clean cap paper, and let lie some minutes.

Observe, that fish never looks well if not fried in plenty of fat, and that boiling hot, before it be put into it. The dripping may serve again with a little fresh. Take care the fat does not become black. Butter makes every thing black that is fried in it. The soals should just fit the inside of the dish, and a fringe of curled parsley garnish the edge completely, which looks beautifully.

Soals that have been fried, eat good cold with oil, vinegar, salt, and mustard. Note. Fine oil gives the finest colour, but is expensive.

Stewed Soals, and Carp,

Are to be done like lampreys.

Soals, in the Portuguese way.

Take one large or two lesser; if the former, cut the fish in two; if they are small, they need only be split. The bones being taken out, put the fish into a pan, with a bit of butter and some lemonjuice: give it a fry; then lay the fish on a dish, and spread a forcemeat over each piece, and roll it round, fastening the roll with a few small skewers. Lay the rolls into a small earthen pan; beat an egg and wet them, then strew crumbs over, and put the remainder of the egg, with a little meat gravy, a spoonful of caper liquor, an anchovy chopped fine, and some parsley chopped, into the bottom of the pan; cover it close, and bake, until the fish be done enough, in a slow oven. Then place the rolls in the dish for serving; cover it to keep it hot until the gravy baked be skimmed: if not enough, a little fresh, flavoured as above, must be prepared and added to it.

The stuffing to be made as on the following page.

Stuffing for Soals baked.

Pound cold beef, mutton, or veal, a little, then add some fat bacon, that has been lightly fried, cut small, and some onions, a little garlick or shalot, some parsley, anchovy, pepper, salt, and nutmeg. Pound all fine with a few crumbs, and bind it with two or three yelks of eggs.

The heads of the fish are to be left on one side of the split part, and kept on the outer side of the roll; and when served, the heads are to be turned towards each other in the dish.

Garnish with fried or dried parsley.

Soal, Cod, or Turbot Pie: another sort of stuffing.

Boil two pounds of eels tender; pick all the flesh clean from the bones; throw the latter into the liquor the eels were boiled in, with a little mace, salt and parsley, and boil till very good, and come to a quarter of a pint, and strain it. In the mean time cut the flesh of the eels fine, likewise some lemonpeel, parsley, and an anchovy: put to them pepper, salt, nutmeg, and some crumbs. Melt four ounces of butter and mix, then lay it in a dish at the bottom: cut the flesh of two or three soals clean from the bones, and fins; lay it on the forcemeat, and pour the eelbroth in. The bones of the soals should be boiled with those of the eels. You may boil them with one or two little eels, and pour it, well seasoned, on the fish, and put no forcemeat.

An excellent way of dressing a large Plaice, especially if there be a roe.

Sprinkle it with salt, and keep it twenty four hours, then wash and wipe it dry: wet it over with eggs; cover with crumbs of bread; make some lard or fine dripping, and two large spoonfuls of vinegar boiling hot, lay the fish in, and fry it a fine colour. Drain it from the fat, and serve with fried parsley round, and anchovy sauce. You may dip the fish in vinegar, and not put it in the pan.

To fry Smelts.

They should not be washed more than necessary to clean. Dry in a cloth, then lightly flour, but shake it off. Dip them in plenty of egg, then into bread crumbs grated fine, and plunge them into a good pan of boiling lard. Let them continue gently boiling, and a few minutes will make them a bright yellow brown. Take care not to take off the light roughness of the crumbs, or their beauty will be lost.

Boiled Carp.

Serve in a napkin, and with the sauce directed for it among sauces.

Cod’s head and shoulders,

Will eat much finer, by having a little salt rubbed down the bone, and along the thick part, even if to be eaten the same day.

Tie it up, and put on the fire in cold water which will completely cover it: throw a handful of salt in it. Great care must be taken to serve it without the smallest speck of black or scum. Garnish with a large quantity of double parsley, lemon, horseradish, and the milt, roe, and liver, and smelts fried, if approved. If the latter, be cautious that no water hang about the fish, or the beauty of the smelts will be taken off, as well as their flavour.

Serve with plenty of oyster or shrimp sauce, and anchovy, and butter.

Some people boil the cod whole; but there is no fish, that is more proper to help, than in a large head and shoulders, the thinner parts being overdone and tasteless before the thick be ready: but the whole fish may be purchased, at times, more reasonably, and the lower half, if sprinkled the least, and hung up, will be in high perfection one or two days: or it may be made salter, and served with egg sauce, potatoes, and parsnips.

Crimp Cod.

Boil, broil, or fry.

Cod sounds boiled.

Soak them in warm water till soft, then scrape and clean; and if to be dressed white, boil them in milk and water, and when tender serve them in a napkin. Egg sauce.

Cod sounds ragout.

Prepare as above, then stew them in white gravy seasoned; cream, butter, and a little bit of flour added before you serve, gently boiling up. A bit of lemonpeel, nutmeg, and the least pounded mace, should give the flavour.

Curry of Cod,

Should be made of sliced cod that has either been crimped, or sprinkled a day to make it firm. Fry it of a fine brown, with onions, and stew it with a good white gravy, a little curry powder, a bit of butter and flour, three or four spoonfuls of rich cream, salt and Cayenne.

Fish Pie.

Cod or Haddock, sprinkled with salt to give firmness, slice and season with pepper and salt, and place in a dish mixed with oysters. Put the oyster liquor, a little broth, and a bit of flour and butter, boiled together, into the dish cold. Put a paste over; and when it comes from the oven, pour in some warm cream. If you please you may put parsley instead of oysters.

Haddock.

Do the same as cod, and serve with the same sauce; or, stuff with forcemeat as page eleventh. Or broil them with stuffing.

Oysters to stew.

Open them and separate the liquor from them, then wash them from the grit: strain the liquor, and put with the oysters a bit of mace and lemonpeel, and a few white peppers. Simmer them very gently, and put some cream, and a little flour and butter.

Serve with sippets.

Scalloped Oysters.

Put them with crumbs of bread, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and a bit of butter, in scallop shells or saucers, and bake them before the fire, in a Dutch oven.

Oyster Patties or small Pie.

As you open the oysters, separate them from the liquor, which strain; parboil them, after taking off the beards. Parboil sweetbreads, and cutting them in slices, lay them and the oysters in layers: season very lightly with salt, pepper, and mace. Then put half a teacup of liquor, and the same of gravy. Bake in a slow oven; and before you serve, put a teacup of cream, a little more oyster liquor and a cup of white gravy, all warmed, but not boiled. If for patties, the oysters should be cut in small dice, gently stewed, and seasoned as above, and put into the paste when ready for table.

Fried Oysters, to garnish boiled fish.

Make a batter of flour, milk, and eggs; season it a very little; dip the oysters in it, and fry them a fine yellow brown. A little nutmeg should be put into the seasoning, and a few crumbs of bread into the flour.

To pickle Oysters.

Wash four dozen of oysters in their own liquor; then strain, and in it simmer them till scalded enough: take them out and cover them. To the liquor put a few peppercorns, a blade of mace, a table spoonful of salt, three of white wine, and four of vinegar: simmer fifteen minutes; and when cold, pour it on the oysters, and keep them in a jar close covered.

Another way.

Open the number you intend to pickle: put them into a saucepan, with their own liquor, for ten minutes; simmer them very gently; then put them into a jar, one by one, that none of the grit may stick to them, and cover them, when cold, with the pickle thus made. Boil the liquor with a bit of mace, lemon peel, and black peppers; and to every hundred, put two spoonfuls of the best undistilled vinegar.

They should be kept in small jars, and tied close with bladder, for the air will spoil them.

Stuffing for Pike, Haddock, &c.

Of fat bacon, beefsuet, and fresh butter, equal parts; some parsley, thyme, and savory; a little onion, and a few leaves of scented marjoram, shred finely; an anchovy or two; a little salt and nutmeg, and some pepper.

If you have oysters, three or four may be used instead of anchovies. Mix all with crumbs of bread, and two yelks and whites of eggs, well beaten, and parsley shred fine.

Sprats,

When cleaned, should be fastened in rows by a skewer, run through the heads, and then broiled and served hot and hot.

Sprats baked, as herrings, page [8].

—— fried, as do. page [9].

To dress fresh Sturgeon.

Cut slices, rub egg over, then sprinkle with crumbs of bread, parsley, pepper, salt, and fold in paper, and broil gently.

Sauce; butter, anchovy, and soy.

Thornback, or Skate,

Should be hung one day at least, before it be dressed, and may be served either boiled, or fried in crumbs, being first dipped in egg.

Crimp Skate.

Boiled, and sent up in a napkin; or fried as above.

Maids,

Should be likewise hung one day at least. May be boiled or fried; or if of a tolerable size, the middle may be boiled and the fins fried. They should be dipped in egg, and covered with crumbs.

OBSERVATIONS ON DRESSING FISH.

If the fishmonger does not clean it, fish is seldom very nicely done; but those in great towns wash it beyond what is necessary for cleaning, and by perpetual watering diminish the flavor. When quite clean, if to be boiled, some salt and a little vinegar should be put to the water to give firmness; but cod, whiting and haddock, are far better if a little salted, and kept a day; and if not very hot weather they will be good in two days.

Those who know how to purchase fish, may, by taking more at a time than they want for one day, often get it cheap, and that which will hang by sprinkling, may then be bought to advantage.

The fish must be put into the water while cold, and set to do very gently, or the outside will break before the inner part be done.

The fishplate on which it is done, may be drawn up to see if it be ready; it will leave the bone when it is. It should be then immediately taken out of the water, or it will be woolly. The fishplate should be set crossways over the kettle, to keep hot for serving, and a clean cloth should cover the fish to prevent its losing its colour.

Small fish, nicely fried in egg, and crumbs, make a dish of fish far more elegant than served plain. Great attention should be paid to garnishing fish; plenty of horseradish, parsley, and lemon.

When well done, and with very good sauce, fish is more attended to than almost any other dish. The liver and roe should be placed on the dish, so conspicuously that the lady may see them, and help a part to every one. The sound of the cod, its head, and the head of carp are reckoned the prime parts; and it is a part of necessary attention to help, or at least offer some of the best to one’s friends; nor is it any excuse for the mistress’s negligence, that it is the fashion of the present day for those who sit at her right or left hand to help the company, which she must see they do properly.

If salmon is to be dressed, great care is necessary that it be done enough. No vinegar should be boiled with it.

If fish is to be fried or broiled, it must be wrapt in a nice soft cloth, after it is well cleaned and washed. When perfectly dry, wet with an egg, if the former way, and sprinkle the finest crumbs of bread over it; then having a thick bottomed fryingpan on the fire, with a large quantity of lard or dripping boiling hot, plunge the fish into it, and let it fry middlingly quick, till the colour be a fine brown yellow, and it be judged ready: if the latter take place first, the cook should draw the pan to the side of the fire, lest the colour be spoiled. She should then carefully take it up, and either place it on a large sieve turned upwards, and to be kept for that purpose only, or on the underside of a dish, to drain; and if wanted very nice, a sheet of cap paper must be put to receive the fish, which should look a beautiful colour, and all the crumbs appear distinct; the fish being free from all grease.

Garnish with a fringe of curled raw parsley, or parsley fried, which must be thus done: when washed and picked, throw it again into clean water; when the lard or dripping boils, throw the parsley into it immediately from the water, and instantly it will be green, and crisp, and must be taken up with a slice. This may be done after the fish is fried.

If fish is to be broiled, it must be seasoned and floured, and put on a gridiron that is very clean; and when hot, it should be rubbed with a bit of suet to prevent the fish from sticking. It must be broiled on a very clear fire, that it may not taste of smoke; and not too near, that it may not be scorched.

An excellent imitation of Sturgeon.

Take a fine large, but not an old turkey; pick it most nicely; singe it, and make it very clean; bone, wash, and dry it; tie it across and across, with a bit of mat string, washed clean, as they tie sturgeon. Put into a very nice tin saucepan a quart of water, the same of vinegar, and of white wine, that is not sweet, and a very large handful of salt. Let boil, and skim well, then put in the turkey: when done, take it out and tighten the strings. Let the liquor boil half an hour after, and when cold put it on the turkey. If salt or vinegar be wanting, add when cold. This will keep some months. You eat it with oil and vinegar, or sugar and vinegar. It is more delicate than sturgeon, and makes a pretty variety, if the real is not to be had. Cover it with fennel when brought to table.

ON DRESSING MEATS.

Wash all meats before you dress; if for boiling, the colour will be better for soaking; if for roasting, dry it.

Boiling in a well floured cloth, will make meat white.

Particular charge must be given that the pot be well skimmed the moment it boils, otherwise the foulness will be dispersed over the meat. The more soups or broths are skimmed, the better and cleaner they will be.

The boiler and utensils should be kept delicately clean.

Put the meat in cold water, and flour it well first. If meat be boiled quick it will be hard; but care must be taken that in boiling slow it does not cease, or the meat will be underdone.

If the steam be kept in, the water will not much decrease; therefore when you wish to evaporate, remove the cover of the soup pot.

Vegetables should not be dressed with the meat, except carrots or parsnips with boiled beef.

Weigh the joint, and allow a quarter of an hour to each pound, and about twenty minutes over. If for roasting, it should be put at a good distance from the fire, and brought gradually nearer when the inner part becomes hot, which will prevent its being scorched while yet raw. Meat should be much basted, and when nearly done, floured to make it look frothed.

Veal and mutton should have a little paper put over the fat to preserve it. If not fat enough to allow for basting, a little good dripping answers as well as butter.

The cook should be careful to spit meat so as not to run the spit through the best parts; and she should observe that her spit be well cleaned before, and when she is going to serve, or a black stain appears on the meat. In many joints the spit will pass into the bones, and run along them for some distance, so as not to injure the prime of the meat; and she should have leaden skewers to enable her to balance it; for want of which, ignorant servants often are foiled in the time of serving.

In roasting meat, it is a very good way to put a little salt and water into the dripping pan, and baste for a little while with it before it be done with its own fat or dripping. When dry, dust it with flour, and baste as usual.

Time, distance, basting often, and a clear fire, of a proper size for what is required, are the first articles of a good cook’s attention in roasting.

Old meats do not require so much dressing as young: not that they are sooner done, but they can be eaten with the gravy more in.

Be careful in roasting wild fowls to keep a clear brisk fire. Roast them of a light brown, but not till their gravy runs; they loose their fine flavour if too much done. Tame fowls require more roasting: they are a long time before they are hot through, and must be often basted to keep up a froth, and it makes the colour better. Pigs and geese require a brisk fire, and to be turned quick.

Hares and rabbits require time, and care to turn the two ends to the fire, which are less likely to be done enough than the middle part.

Choose mutton by the fineness of its grain, the deep red of the flesh, and bright whiteness of the fat. For roasting, it should hang as long as it will keep, the hind quarter especially, but not so as to taint; for, whatever fashion may authorize, putrid juices ought not to be conveyed into the stomach.

Mutton, for boiling, will not look of a good colour if it has long hung. Small mutton is preferred.

Great care should be taken to preserve by paper the fat of what is roasted.

To keep Venison.

Preserve the venison dry; wash it with milk and water very clean; dry it with clean cloths, till not the least damp remain. Then dust pounded ginger over every part, which is a good preventive against the fly. By thus managing and watching, it will hang a fortnight. When to be used, wash it with a little lukewarm water, and dry it.

Venison.

A haunch of buck will take about three hours and three quarters roasting; doe, three hours and a quarter. Put a coarse paste of brown flour and water, and a paper over that, to cover all the fat: baste it well with dripping, and keep it at a distance to get hot at the bone by degrees. When nearly done, remove the covering, and baste it with butter, and froth it up before you serve.

Gravy for it should be put into a boat, and not in the dish (unless there be none in the venison), and made thus: cut off the fat from two or three pounds of a loin of old mutton, and set it in steaks on a gridiron for a few minutes, just to brown one side: put them in a saucepan, with a quart of water: cover quite close for an hour, and gently simmer it; then uncover, and stew till the gravy be reduced to a point. Season with only salt.

Currantjelly sauce must be served in a boat.

Formerly pap sauce was eaten with venison, which, as some still like it, may be necessary to direct. Grate white bread, and boil it with port and water, a large stick of cinnamon; and when quite smooth, remove the latter, and add sugar. Claret wine may be used for it.

Make the jelly sauce thus. Beat some currantjelly, and a spoonful or two of port, then set it over the fire till melted. Where jelly runs short, put more wine, and a few lumps of sugar to the jelly, and melt as above.

To make a Pasty of Beef or Mutton, to eat as well as Venison.

Bone a small rump, or a piece of sirloin of beef, or a fat loin of mutton: the former is better than mutton, after hanging several days, if the weather permits. Beat it very well with a rolling pin, then rub ten pounds of meat with four ounces of sugar, and pour over it a glass of port wine, and the same of vinegar. Let it lie five days and nights: wash and wipe the meat very dry, and season it very high with pepper, Jamaica pepper, nutmeg, and salt. Lay in your dish, and to ten pounds put one pound or near of butter, spreading it over the meat. Put a crust round the edges, and cover with a thick one, or it will be overdone before the meat be soaked. It must be done in a slow oven.

Set the bones in a pan in the oven, with no more water than will cover them, and one glass of port wine, a little pepper and salt, that you may have a little rich gravy to add to the pasty when drawn.

Note. Sugar gives a greater shortness, and better flavor to meats than salt, too great a quantity of which hardens; and it is quite as great a preservative.

Haunch, Neck and Shoulders of Venison.

Roast with paste, as directed above, and the same sauce.

Stewed Shoulder.

Let the meat hang till you judge proper to dress it, then take out the bone: beat the meat with a rolling pin. Lay some slices of mutton fat, that has lain a few hours in a little port wine, among it: sprinkle a little black and Jamaica pepper over it, in finest powder: roll it up tight, and fillet it. Set it in a stewpan that will only just hold it, with some mutton or beef gravy, not strong, half a pint of port, and some pepper and pimento. Simmer, close covered, and as slow as you can, for three or four hours. When quite tender, take off the tape, set the meat on a dish, and strain the gravy over. Serve with currantjelly sauce.

This is the best way to dress this joint, unless it be very fat, and then it should be roasted. The bone should be stewed with it.

To prepare Venison for Pasty.

Take the bones out, then season and beat the meat. Lay it in a stone jar in large pieces: pour upon it some plain drawn beef gravy, but not a strong one: lay the bones on top, then set the jar in a waterbath, that is, a saucepan of water over the fire; simmer three or four hours; then leave it in a cold place till next day. Remove the cake of fat, and lay the meat in handsome pieces on the dish: if not sufficiently seasoned, add more pepper, salt, or pimento, as necessary. Put some of the gravy, and keep the remainder for the time of serving. If the venison be thus prepared, it will not require so much time to bake, or such a very thick crust as is usual, and by which the under part is seldom done through.

Venison Pasty.

A shoulder, boned, makes a good pasty; but it must be beaten and seasoned, and the want of fat supplied by that of a fine well hung loin of mutton, steeped twenty four hours in equal parts of rape, vinegar, and port.

The shoulder being sinewy, it will be of advantage to rub it well with sugar for two or three days; and when to be used, wipe it perfectly clean from it, and the wine.

A mistake used to prevail, that venison could not be baked enough; but, as above directed, three or four hours in a slow oven will be sufficient to make it tender, and the flavor will be preserved. Either in shoulder or side, the meat must be cut in pieces, and laid with fat between, that it may be proportioned to each person, without breaking up the pasty to find it. Lay some pepper and salt, at the bottom of the dish, and some butter, then the meat nicely packed, that it may be sufficiently done, but not lie hollow to harden at the edges.

The venison bones should be boiled with some fine old mutton. Of this gravy put half a pint cold into the dish, then lay butter on the venison, and cover, as well as line the sides with a thick crust; but do not put one under the meat. Keep the remainder of the gravy till the pasty comes from the oven; put it into the middle by a funnel, quite hot, and shake the dish to mix well. It should be seasoned with pepper and salt.

An imitation of Venison Pasty.

Choose a large well fed loin of mutton; hang it ten days, then bone it, leaving the meat as whole as possible. Cover it with brown sugar a day and night; then lay it in a pickle of half a pint of port wine, and half a pint of rape or common vinegar, twenty four hours more: then shake it well in it to take off the sugar, but do not wash, only wipe it. Season as above, and bake; making a gravy of the bones.

Crust for the pasty, see under the article of crusts.

Hashed Venison,

Should be warmed with its own, or gravy without seasoning, as before, and only warmed through, not boiled. If there be no fat left, cut some slices of mutton fat, set on the fire, with a little port wine and sugar: simmer till dry; then add it to the hash, and it will eat as well as that of the venison.

Beef or Pork, to be salted for eating immediately.

The piece should not weigh more than five or six pounds. Salt it very thoroughly just before you put it in the pot. Take a coarse cloth, flour it well, put the meat in and fold it up close. Put it into a pot of boiling water, and boil it as long as you would any salt beef of the same size, and it will be as salt as if done four or five days.

Beef Alamode.

Choose a piece of thick flank of a fine heifer or ox. Cut into long slices some fat bacon, but quite free from yellow. Let each bit be near an inch thick, and dip them in vinegar, and then in a seasoning ready prepared of salt, black and Jamaica peppers and a clove in finest powder, with parsley, chives, thyme, savory and knotted marjorum, shred as small as possible, and well mixed. With a sharp knife make holes deep enough to let in the larding; then rub the beef over with the seasoning, and bind it up tight with tape. Set it in a well tinned pot over a fire or rather stove. Three or four onions must be fried brown and put to the beef, with two or three carrots, one turnip, and a head or two of celery, and a small quantity of water. Let it simmer gently ten or twelve hours, or till extremely tender, turning the meat twice.

Put the gravy in a pan, remove the fat, keep the beef covered, then put them together, and add a glass of port wine. Remove the tape, and serve with the vegetables: or you may strain them off, and send up fresh, cut in dice for garnish. Onions roasted, and then stewed with the gravy, are a great improvement. A teacup full of vinegar should be stewed with the beef.

Stewed rump of Beef.

Wash it well: season it high with pepper, Cayenne, salt, Jamaica pepper, three cloves, a blade of mace, all in finest powder. Bind it up tight, and lay it in a pot that will just hold it. Fry three large onions, sliced, and put to it, with three carrots, two turnips, a shalot, four cloves, a blade of mace, and some celery. Cover the meat with good beef broth, or weak gravy. Simmer as gently as possible for several hours, till quite tender. Clear off the fat, and add to the gravy half a pint of port wine, a glass of vinegar, and a large spoonful of catsup; simmer half an hour, and serve in a deep dish.

Garnish with carrots, turnips, or truffles, and morels, or pickles of different colours cut small, and laid in little heaps separate, chopped parsley, chives, beetroot, &c. If when done the gravy be too much to fill the dish, take only a part to season for serving: the less wafer the better; and to increase the richness, add a few beef bones and shanks of mutton in stewing.

A spoonful or two of made mustard is a great improvement to the gravy.

Rump roasted is excellent; but in the country is generally sold whole with the edgebone, or cut across instead of lengthways, as in London, when there is one piece for boiling, and the rump for stewing or roasting.

Stewed Brisket.

Put the part that has the hard fat into a stew pot, with a small quantity of water; let it boil up, and skim it thoroughly; then add carrots, turnips, onions, celery, and a few peppercorns. Stew till extremely tender; then take out the flat bones, and remove all the fat from the soup. Either serve that and the meat in a tureen, or the former alone, and the meat on a dish, garnished with some of the vegetables. The following sauce is much admired, served with the beef. Take half a pint of the soup, and mix with a spoonful of catsup, a glass of port wine, a teaspoonful of made mustard, a little flour, a bit of butter, and salt: boil all together a few minutes, then pour it round the meat. Chop capers, walnuts, red cabbage, pickled cucumbers, and chives or parsley, small, and put in separate heaps over it.

To salt Beef red, which is extremely good to eat fresh from the pickle, or to hang to dry.

Choose a piece of beef with as little bone as you can, the flank is most proper: sprinkle it, and let it drain a day; then rub it with common salt, saltpetre, and bay salt, but of the second a small proportion; and you may add a few grains of cochineal, all in fine powder. Rub the pickle every day into the meat for a week, then only turn it.

It will be excellent in eight days. In sixteen, drain it from the pickle, and let it be smoked at the oven mouth, where heated with wood, or send to the baker’s. A few days will smoke it.

A little of the coarsest sugar may be added to the salt.

It eats well boiled tender with greens or carrots. If to be grated as Dutch, then cut a lean bit: boil it till extremely tender; and while hot put it under a press. When cold, fold it in a sheet of paper, and it will keep in a dry place two or three months.

Pressed Beef.

Salt a bit of brisket, thin part of the flank, or the tops of the ribs, with salt and saltpetre, five days; then boil it gently till extremely tender. Put it under a great weight, or in a cheese press, till perfectly cold.

It eats excellently cold, and for Sandwiches.

Hunter’s Beef.

To a round of beef that weighs twenty five pounds, take three ounces of saltpetre, three ounces of coarsest sugar, an ounce of cloves, one nutmeg, half an ounce of pimento, and three handfuls of common salt, all in the finest powder.

The beef should hang two or three days, then rub the above well into it. Turn and rub it daily for two or three weeks. The bone must be removed at first. When to be dressed, dip it in cold water to take off the loose spice: bind it up tight with tape: put it into a pan, and a teacup of water at bottom: put over the pan a brown crust and paper, and bake it five or six hours. When cold, remove the paste and fillet.

The gravy is very fine, and a little of it adds greatly to the flavor of any hash, soup, &c.

Both gravy and beef will keep some time. The latter should be cut with a very sharp knife, and quite smooth, to prevent waste.

Collared Beef.

Choose the thin end of the flank of fine mellow beef, but not too fat. Lay it in a dish with salt, and saltpetre. Turn and rub it every day for a week, and keep it cool. Then take out every bone and gristle; remove the skin of the inside part, and cover it thick with the following seasoning cut small: a large handful of parsley, the same of sage, some thyme, marjorum, pennyroyal, pepper, salt and pimento. Roll the meat up as tight as possible, and bind it; then boil it gently for seven or eight hours. A cloth must be put round before the tape. Put the beef under a good weight while hot, without undoing it; the shape will then be oval. Part of a breast of veal, rolled in with the beef, looks and eats very well.

Beefsteak and Oyster Sauce.

Strain off the liquor from the oysters, and throw them in cold water to take off the grit, while you simmer the former with a bit of mace and lemonpeel; then put the oysters in, stew them a few minutes, and add a little cream if you have it, and some butter, rubbed in a bit of flour; let them boil up once, and have rump steaks, well seasoned and broiled, ready for throwing the oyster sauce over the moment you are to serve.

Staffordshire Beefsteaks.

Beat them a little with a rolling pin: flour and season them; then fry with sliced onion to a fine light brown. Lay the steaks in a stewpan, and pour as much boiling water over as will serve for sauce: stew them very gently half an hour, and add a spoonful of catsup or walnut liquor before you serve.

Italian Beefsteaks.

Cut a fine large steak from a rump that has been well hung; or it will do from any tender part. Beat it, and season with pepper, salt and onion. Lay it in an iron stewpan, that has a cover to fit quite close; set it at the side of a fire, without water. Take care it does not burn, but it must have a strong heat. In two or three hours it will be quite tender, then serve with its own gravy.

Beef Collop.

Cut thin slices of beef from the rump or other tender parts, and divide them in pieces three inches long: beat with the blade of a knife, and flour them. Fry the collops quick in butter two minutes; then lay them in a small stewpan, and cover with a pint of gravy: add a bit of butter rubbed in flour, pepper, salt, the least bit of shalot shred as fine as possible, half a walnut, four small pickled cucumbers, and a teaspoonful of capers cut small. Observe it does not boil; and serve the stew in a very hot covered dish.

Beefsteak Pudding.

Prepare some fine steaks as above: roll them with fat between, and if you approve shred onion, add a very little. Lay a paste of suet in a bason, and put in the rollers of steaks: cover the bason with a paste, and pinch the edges to keep the gravy in. Cover with a cloth tied close, and let the pudding boil slowly, but for a length of time.

Beefsteak Pie.

Prepare the steaks as above, and when seasoned and rolled with fat in each, put them in a dish, with puff paste round the edges. Put a little water in the dish, and cover it with a good crust.

Baked Beefsteak Pudding.

Make a batter of milk, two eggs, and flour, or which is much better, potatoes boiled and mashed through a colander. Lay a little of it at the bottom of the dish, then put in the steaks prepared as above, and very well seasoned; pour the remainder of the batter over them, and bake it.

Podovies, or Beef Patties.

Shred raredone dressed beef, with a little fat: season with pepper, salt, and a little shalot or onion. Make a plain paste, roll it thin, and cut it in shape like an apple puff; fill it with the mince, pinch the edges, and fry them of a nice brown. The paste should be made with a small quantity of butter, egg, and milk.

Beef Palates.

Simmer them in water several hours, till they will peel; then cut the palates in slices, or leave them whole, as you choose, and stew them in a rich gravy till as tender as possible. Before you serve, season with Cayenne, salt, and catsup. If the gravy was drawn clear, add to the above some butter and flour.

Beef Cakes for side dish of dressed meat.

Pound some beef that is raredone, with a little fat bacon or ham. Season with pepper, salt, and a little shalot or garlic: mix them well, and make into small cakes three inches long, and half as wide and thick: fry them a light brown, and serve them in a good thick gravy.

Potted Beef.

Take two pounds of lean beef, rub it with saltpetre, and let it lie one night; then salt with common salt, and cover it with water four days in a small pan. Dry it with a cloth, and season with pepper: lay it into as small a pan as will hold it; cover it with coarse paste, and bake it five hours in a very cool oven. Put no liquor in.

When cold, pick out the strings and fat; beat the meat very fine with a quarter of a pound of fine butter just warm, but not oiled, and as much of the gravy as will make it into a paste. Put it into very small pots, and cover them with melted butter.

Another way.

Take beef that has been dressed, either boiled or roasted: beat it in a mortar with some pepper, salt, a few cloves, grated nutmeg, a little fine butter just warm.

This eats as well, but the colour is not so fine.

Hessian Soup and Ragout.

Clean the root of a tongue very nicely, and half an ox head, with salt and water, and soak them afterwards in plain water; then stew them in five or six quarts of water till tolerably tender. Let the soup stand to be cold: take off the cake of fat, which will make good paste for hot meat pies, or serve to baste. Put to the soup a pint of split peas or a quart of whole, twelve carrots, six turnips, six potatoes, six large onions, a bunch of sweet herbs, and two heads of celery. Simmer them without the meat, till the vegetables are done enough to pulp with the peas through a sieve, when the soup will be about the consistence of cream. Season it with pepper, salt, mace, pimento, a clove or two, and a little Cayenne, all in the finest powder. If the peas are bad, the soup may not be thick enough; then boil in it a slice of roll, and put through the colander; or put a little rice flour, mixing it by degrees.

The Ragout.

Cut the nicest part of the head in small thick pieces, the kernels, and part of the fat of the root of the tongue. Rub these with some of the same seasoning, as you put them into a quart of the liquor, kept out for that purpose before the vegetables were added; flour well, and simmer them till nicely tender. Then put a little mushroom and walnut catsup, a little soy, and a glass of port wine, a teaspoonful of made mustard, and boil all up together before served.

If for company, small eggs and forcemeat balls.

This mode furnishes an excellent soup, and a ragout at small expense, and they are uncommon. The other part will warm for the family.

Stewed Oxcheek plain.

Soak and cleanse a fine cheek the day before you would have it eaten. Put it into a stewpot that will cover close, with three quarts of water: simmer it, after it has first boiled up and been well skimmed. In two hours put plenty of carrots, leeks, two or three turnips, a bunch of sweet herbs, some whole pepper, and four Jamaica’s. Skim frequently. When the meat is tender, take it out: let the soup go cold: remove the cake of fat, and serve it separate or with the meat.

It should be of a fine brown, which may be done by burnt sugar, or by frying some onions quite brown with flour, and simmering them with it. The latter improves the flavour of all soups and gravies of the brown kind.

If vegetables are not approved in the soup, they may be taken out, and a small roll be toasted, or bread fried and added. Celery is a great addition, and should be always served. Where it is not to be got, the seed gives an equally good flavour, boiled in, and strained off.

To dress an Oxcheek another way.

Soak half a head three hours, and clean it with plenty of water. Take the meat off the bones; put it into a pan with a large onion, a bunch of sweet herbs, some bruised pimento, pepper, and salt.

Lay the bones on the top: pour on two or three quarts of water: cover the pan close with brown paper, or a dish that will fit close. Let it stand eight or ten hours in a slow oven, or simmer it by the side of the fire, or on a hot hearth. When done tender, let it go cold, having moved the meat into a clean pan. Take the cake of fat off, and warm the head in pieces in the soup. Put what vegetables you choose.

Marrow Bones.

Cover the top with floured cloth: boil, and serve with dry toast.

To dress the Inside of a cold Sirloin of Beef.

Cut out all the meat, and a little fat, in pieces as thick as your finger, and two inches long. Dredge with flour, and fry in butter, of a nice brown. Drain the butter from the meat, and toss up in a rich gravy, seasoned with pepper, salt, anchovy, and shalot. On no account let it boil. Before you serve, add two spoonfuls of vinegar.

Garnish with crimped parsley.

Fricassee of cold Roast Beef.

Cut the beef into very thin slices: shred a handful of parsley very small: cut an onion in quarters, and put all together into a stewpan, with a piece of butter, and some strong broth. Season with salt and pepper, and simmer very gently a quarter of an hour; then mix into it the yelks of two eggs, a glass of port wine, and a spoonful of vinegar: stir it quick, and, rubbing the dish with shalot, turn the fricassee into it.

To dress Cold Beef that has not been done enough, called Beef Olives.

Cut slices half an inch thick, and four square: lay on them a forcemeat of crumbs of bread, shalot, a little suet or fat, pepper, and salt. Roll them, and fasten with a small skewer. Put them into a stewpan, with some gravy made of the beef bones, or the gravy of the meat, and a spoonful or two of water, and stew them till tender. Fresh meat will do.

To dress ditto, called Sanders.

Mince small beef or mutton, onion, pepper, and salt; add a little gravy: put into scallopshells or saucers: make them three parts full; then fill them up with potatoes, mashed with a little cream: put a bit of butter on the top, and brown them in an oven, or before the fire.

To dress ditto, called Cecils.

Mince any kind of meat, crumbs of bread, a good deal of onion, some anchovies, lemonpeel, salt, nutmeg, chopped parsley, and pepper, and a bit of butter warm, and mix these over a fire for a few minutes. When cool enough, make them up into balls of the size and shape of a turkey’s egg, with an egg. Fry them, when sprinkled with fine crumbs, of a yellow brown, and serve with gravy as above.

Minced Beef.

Shred fine the underdone part, with some of the fat. Put into a small stewpan, some onion, or shalot, (a very little will do,) a little water, pepper, and salt: boil till the onion be quite soft; then put some of the gravy of the meat to it, and the mince. Do not let it boil. Having a small hot dish, with sippets of bread ready, pour the mince into it; but first mix a large spoonful of vinegar with it: or if shalot vinegar, there will be no need of the onion, or raw shalot.

Hashed Beef.

Do the same, only the meat is to be in slices; and you may add a spoonful of walnut liquor or catsup.

Observe, that it is owing to boiling hashes or minces, that they are hard. All sorts of stews, or meat dressed second hand, should only be simmered; and the latter only hot through.

To preserve Suet a twelvemonth.

As soon as it comes in, choose the firmest part, and pick free from skin and veins. In a very nice saucepan, set it at some distance from the fire, that it may melt without frying, or it will taste.

When melted, pour it into a pan of cold water. When in a hard cake, wipe it very dry: fold it in fine paper, and then in a linen bag, and keep in a dry, but not hot place. When used, scrape it fine; and it will make a fine crust, either with or without butter.

Round of Beef,

Should be carefully salted, and wet with the pickle for eight or ten days. The bone should be cut out first, and the beef skewered and filleted, to make it quite round. It may be stuffed with parsley, if approved; in which case, the holes to admit it must be made with a sharp pointed knife, and the parsley coarsely cut and stuffed in tight. As soon as it boils, it should be skimmed, and afterwards kept boiling very gently.

To roast Tongue and Udder.

After cleaning the tongue well, salt it with common salt and saltpetre three days; then boil it, and likewise a fine young udder, and some fat to it, till tolerably tender; then tie the thick part of one to the thin part of the other, and roast the tongue and udder together.

Serve them with a good gravy, and currantjelly sauce. A few cloves should be stuck in the udder.

This is an excellent dish.

To pickle Tongues for boiling.

Cut off the root, leaving a little of the kernel and fat. Sprinkle some salt, and let it drain from the slime till next day: then, for each tongue, mix a large spoonful of common salt, the same of coarse sugar, and about half as much of saltpetre; rub it well in, and do so every day. In a week add another heaped spoonful of salt. If rubbed every day, a tongue will be ready in a fortnight; but if only turned in the pickle daily, it will keep four or five weeks without being too salt.

If you dry tongues, write the date on a parchment and tie on. Smoke them, or plainly dry them, if you like best.

When to be dressed, boil it extremely tender: allow five hours; and if done sooner, it is easily kept hot. The longer kept after drying, the higher it will be: if hard, it may require soaking three or four hours.

Another way.

Clean as above. For two tongues, one ounce of saltpetre, and one ounce of sal prunella. Rub them well. In two days, having well rubbed them, cover them with common salt. Turn them daily for three weeks; then dry, rub in bran, and paper or smoke them. In ten days they will be fit to eat if not dried.

Beef Heart.

Wash with care. Stuff as you do hare, and serve with rich gravy, and currantjelly sauce.

Hash with the same, and port wine.

Tripe.

Tripe may be served in a tureen. Stewed with milk and onion till tender. Melted butter for sauce.

Or, fried in small bits dipped in butter: or stew the thin part, cut in bits, in gravy, and thicken with flour and butter, and add a little catsup: or fricasseed with white sauce.

Bubble and Squeak.

Boil, chop, and fry, with a little butter, pepper, and salt, some cabbage, and lay on it slices of raredone beef, lightly fried.

In both the following receipts, the roots must be taken off the tongue before salted.

Stewed Tongue.

Salt a tongue with saltpetre and common salt for a week, turning it daily. Boil it tender enough to peel. When done, stew it in a moderately strong gravy. Season with soy, mushroom catsup, Cayenne, pounded cloves, and salt if necessary.

Serve with truffles, morels, and mushrooms.

An excellent mode of doing Tongues to eat cold.

Season with common salt and saltpetre, brown sugar, a little bay salt, pepper, cloves, mace, and pimento, in finest powder, for fourteen days: then remove the pickle, put it in a small pan, and lay some butter on it; cover with a brown crust, and bake slowly till so tender that a straw would pierce it.

The thin part of tongues, if hung up to become dry, grate as hung beef; and likewise make a fine addition to the flavour of omlets.

Leg of Veal.

Let the fillet be cut large or small, as best suits the number of your company. The bone being taken out, fill the space with a fine stuffing, and let it be skewered quite round, and send the large side uppermost. When half roasted, if not before, put a paper over the fat, and observe to allow a sufficient time, and to put it a good distance from the fire, the meat being very solid. You may pot some of it.

Knuckle.

As few people are fond of boiled veal, it may be well to leave the knuckle small, and to take off some cutlets or collops, before it be dressed; but as the knuckle will keep longer than the fillet, it is best not to cut off the slices till wanted. Break the bones to make it take less room; and, washing it well, put it into a saucepan with three onions, a blade of mace or two, and a few peppercorns; cover with water, and simmer it till thoroughly ready. In the mean time some macaroni should be boiled with it, if approved; or rice, or a little rice flour, to give it a small degree of thickness; but do not put too much. Before it be served, add half a pint of milk and cream, and let it come up with or without the meat.

Or, fry the knuckle, with sliced onion and butter, to a good brown, and have ready peas, lettuce, onion, a cucumber or two, stewed in a small quantity of water an hour, then add to the veal, and stew till the meat be tender enough to eat, not to be overdone. Throw in pepper, salt, and a bit of shred mint, and serve altogether.

Cutlets Maintenon.

Cut slices about three quarters of an inch thick; beat them with a rolling pin, and wet them on both sides with egg: dip them into a seasoning of bread crumbs, parsley, thyme, knotted marjorum, pepper, salt, and a little nutmeg grated; then put them in papers folded over, and broil them; and have ready in a boat, melted butter, with a little mushroom catsup.

Cutlets another way.

Prepare as above, and fry them. Lay them in a dish, and keep them hot. Dredge a little flour, and put a bit of butter into the pan, brown it; then pour a little boiling water into it, and boil quick. Season with pepper, salt, and catsup, and pour over them.

Another way.

Prepare as before, and dress the cutlets in a Dutch oven. Pour over them melted butter and mushrooms. Or, pepper, salt, and broil, especially neck steaks. They are excellent without herbs.

Collops dressed quick.

Cut them as thin as paper, with a very sharp knife, and in small bits. Throw the skin, and any odd bits of the veal into a little water, with a dust of pepper and salt: set them on the fire while you beat the collops, and dip them in a seasoning of herbs, bread, pepper, salt, and a scrape of nutmeg, having first wetted them in egg; then put a bit of butter into a frying pan, and give the collops a very quick fry; for as they are so thin, two minutes will do them on both sides. Put them into a hot dish before the fire, then strain and thicken the gravy. Give a boil in the fryingpan, and pour over the collops. A little catsup is an improvement.

Another way.

Fry them in butter, only seasoned with salt and pepper: then simmer them in gravy, white or brown, with bits of bacon served with them.

If white, add lemonpeel and mace, and some cream.

Veal Collops.

Cut long thin collops: beat them well, and lay on them a bit of thin bacon the same size; and spread forcemeat on that, seasoned high, with the addition of a little garlick, and Cayenne. Roll them up tight, about the size of two fingers, but not more than two or three inches long. Put a very small skewer to fasten each firm. Rub egg over them, and fry of a fine brown, and pour over them a rich brown gravy.

Scollops of cold Veal or Chicken.

Mince the meat extremely small, and set it over the fire, with a scrape of nutmeg, a little pepper and salt, and a little cream, for a few minutes; then put it into the scallopshells, and fill them with crumbs of bread; over which put some bits of butter, and brown them before the fire.

Veal or chicken, as above prepared, served in a dish, and lightly covered with crumbs of bread fried (or they may be put on in little heaps), look and eat well.

Scotch Collops.

Cut veal in thin bits, about three inches over, and rather round: beat with a rolling pin: grate a little nutmeg over them: dip in the yelk of an egg, and fry them in a little butter, of a fine brown: pour it from them; and have ready warm, to pour upon them, half a pint of gravy, a little bit of butter rubbed into a little flour, to which put a yelk of an egg, two large spoonfuls of cream, and a bit of salt. Do not boil the sauce, but stir it until of a fine thickness to serve with the collops.

Kidney.

Chop veal kidney, and some of the fat, likewise a little leek or onion, pepper, salt. Roll it up with an egg into balls, and fry them.

Cold fillet makes the finest potted veal; or you may do it as follows:

Season a large slice of the fillet before dressed, with some mace, peppercorns, and two or three cloves, and lay it close into a potting pan that will but just hold it, and fill it up with water, and bake it three hours. Then pound it quite small in a mortar, and add salt to taste. Put a little gravy, that was baked, to it in pounding, if to be eaten soon; otherwise only a little butter just melted.

When done, cover it over with butter.

To pot Veal or Chicken with Ham.

Pound some cold veal or white of chicken, seasoned as above, and put layers of it with layers of pounded ham, or rather shred: press each down, and cover over with butter.

Neck of Veal.

Cut off the scrag to boil, and cover it with onion sauce. It should be boiled in milk and water. Parsley and butter may be served with it, instead of the former sauce; or it may be stewed with whole rice, small onions, and peppercorns, with a very little water; or boiled and eaten with bacon and greens.

Best end, roasted, broiled as steaks, or made into pies.

Breast of Veal.

Before roasted, if large, the two ends may be taken off and fried to stew, or the whole may be roasted. Butter should be poured over it.

If any be left, cut the pieces in handsome sizes, and putting them into a stewpan, pour some broth over it; or if you have none, a little water will do. Add a bunch of herbs, a blade or two of mace, some pepper, and an anchovy. Stew till the meat is tender: thicken with butter and flour, and add a little catsup; or the whole breast may be stewed, after cutting off the two ends.

The sweetbread is to be served up whole in the middle; and if you have a few mushrooms, truffles, and morels, stew them with it, and serve.

Boiled breast of veal, smothered with onion sauce, is an excellent dish, if not old, or too fat.

Rolled Breast of Veal.

Bone it, and take off the thick skin and gristle, and beat the meat with a rolling pin. Season with herbs chopped very fine, mixed with salt, pepper, and mace. Lay some thick slices of fine ham, or roll into it two or three calves’ tongues of a fine red, and boiled first an hour or two and skinned. Bind it up tight in a cloth, and tape it. Set it over the fire to simmer in a small quantity of water until it be quite tender. Some hours will be necessary.

Lay it on the dresser with a board and weight on it till quite cold.

Pigs’ or calves’ feet, boiled and taken from the bones, may be put in or round it. The different colours, laid in layers, look well when cut; and yelks of eggs boiled may be put in, with beet root, grated ham, and chopped parsley.

Shoulder of Veal.

Cut off the knuckle of the shoulder, for a stew or gravy. Roast the other part, with stuffing. You may lard it. Serve with melted butter.

Blade bone, with a good devil of meat left on, eats extremely well with mushroom or oyster sauce; or mushroom catsup in butter.

Different ways of dressing Calf’s head.

To Boil.

Clean it very nicely, and soak it in water, that it may look very white. Take out the tongue to salt, and the brains to make a little dish. Boil the head extremely tender; then strew it over with crumbs and chopped parsley, and brown them; or, if preferred, leave one side plain.

Bacon and greens are to be served to eat with it.

The brains must be boiled, and then mixed with melted butter, chopped scalded sage, pepper, and salt.

If any be left of the head, it may be hashed next day, and a few slices of bacon just warmed and put round.

Cold calf’s head eats well.

Hashed Calf’s Head.

When half boiled, cut off the meat in slices, half an inch thick, and two or three inches long. Brown some butter, flour, and sliced onion, and throw in the slices with some good gravy, truffles, and morels. Give it one boil, skim it well, and set it in a moderate heat to simmer till very tender.

Season with pepper, salt, and Cayenne, at first; and ten minutes before serving, throw in some shred parsley, and a very small bit of tarragon, and knotted marjorum, cut as fine as possible. Just before you serve, add the squeeze of a lemon. Forcemeat balls and bits of bacon rolled round.

Mock Turtle.

Bespeak a calf’s head with the skin on: cut in half, and clean it well; then half boil it. Have all the meat taken off in square bits, and break the bones of the head: boil them in some veal and beef broth, to add to the richness. Fry some shalot in butter: dredge in flour sufficient to thicken the gravy, which stir into the browning, and give it one or two boils: skim carefully, then put in the head. Put in a pint of Madeira wine, and simmer till the meat be quite tender. About ten minutes before you serve, put in some basil, tarragon, chives, parsley, Cayenne pepper, and salt to your taste; and two spoonfuls of mushroom catsup, and one of soy. Squeeze the juice of a lemon into the tureen, and pour the soup upon it. Forcemeat balls, and small eggs.

A cheaper way.

Prepare half a calf’s head, without the skin, as above. When the meat is cut off, break the bones, and put into a saucepan, with some gravy made of beef and veal bones, and seasoned with fried onions, herbs, mace, and pepper. Have ready two or three ox palates, boiled so tender as to blanch, and cut in small pieces; to which a cowheel, likewise cut in pieces, is a great improvement. Brown some butter, flour, and onion, and pour the gravy to it; then add the meats as above, and stew. Half a pint of sherry wine, an anchovy, two spoonfuls of walnut catsup, the same of mushroom, some chopped herbs as before. Balls, &c.

Forcemeat as for Turtle, at the Bush, Bristol.

A pound of fine fresh suet, one ounce of ready dressed veal or chicken, chopped fine, crumbs of bread, a little shalot or onion, salt, white pepper, nutmeg, mace, pennyroyal, parsley, and lemon; thyme finely shred: beat as many fresh eggs, yelks and whites separately, as will make the above ingredients into a moist paste: roll into small balls, and boil them in fresh lard, putting them in just as it boils up. When of a light brown, take them out, and drain them before the fire. If the suet be moist or stale, a great many more eggs will be necessary.

Balls made this way are remarkably light; but being greasy, some people prefer them with less suet and eggs.

Another Forcemeat, for Balls or Patties.

Pound cold veal or chicken: take out the strings: add some fat bacon; and, if you like, the least portion of scraped ham: herbs, as for the preceding: pepper, salt, a little nutmeg, crumbs of bread, a little onion, and two eggs.

Note. When forcemeat is to be eaten cold, as in pies, bacon is far better than suet, and the taste is always higher.

Another Mock Turtle.

Put into a pan a knuckle of veal, two fine cowheels, two onions, a few cloves, peppers, Jamaica peppers, mace, and sweet herbs: cover with water, and then, tying a thick paper over the pan, set it in an oven for three hours. When cold, take off the fat very nicely: cut the meat and feet into bits an inch and half square: remove the bones and coarser parts; then put the other on to warm, with walnut and mushroom catsup, a large spoonful of each, half a pint of sherry or Madeira wine, a little mushroom powder, and the jelly of the meat. When hot, if it want any more seasoning, add it, and serve with hard eggs, forcemeat balls, a juice of lemon, and a spoonful of soy.

This is a very easy process, and the dish is excellent.

Another Ditto.

Stew a pound and a half of scrag of mutton, with three pints of water to a quart; then set the broth on, with a calf’s foot and a cowheel: cover the stewpan tight, and simmer till you can cut off the meat from the bones in proper bits. Set it on again, with the broth, a quarter of a pint of Madeira or sherry wine, a large onion, half a teaspoonful of Cayenne pepper, a bit of lemonpeel, two anchovies, some sweet herbs, and eighteen oysters cut in pieces, and then chopped fine, a teaspoonful of salt, a little nutmeg, and the liquor of the oysters: cover tight, and simmer three quarters of an hour. Serve with forcemeat balls, and hard eggs in the tureen.

Note. Cowheels, with veal or head, are a great improvement; and if not too much boiled, have a very fine flavour stewed for turtle; and are more solid than the calf’s feet.

Calf’s Head Pie.

Stew a knuckle of veal till fit for eating, with two onions, a few isinglass shavings, a bunch of herbs, 2 blade of mace, and a few peppercorns, in two quarts or less of water. Keep the broth for the pie. Take off a bit of the meat for the balls, and let the other be eaten; but simmer the bones in the broth till it is very good. Half boil the head, and cut it in square bits: put a layer of ham at the bottom, then some head, first fat then lean, with balls and hard eggs cut in half, and so on till the dish be full; but be particularly careful not to place the pieces close, or the pie will be too solid, and there will be no space for the jelly. The meat must be first pretty well seasoned with pepper and salt, and a scrape or two of nutmeg. Put a little water and a little gravy into the dish, and cover it with a tolerably thick crust: bake it in a slow oven; and when done, pour into it as much gravy as it can possibly hold, and do not cut it till perfectly cold: in doing which, observe to use a very sharp knife, and first cut out a large bit, going down to the bottom of the dish; and when done thus, the different colours, and the clear jelly, have a beautiful marbled appearance.

A small pie may be made to eat hot; which, with high seasoning, oysters, mushrooms, truffles, morels, &c. has a very good appearance.

The cold pie will keep some days. Slices make a pretty side dish.

The pickled tongues of former calves’ heads may be cut in, to vary the colour, instead of, or besides ham.

Calf’s Head Fricasseed.

Clean, and half boil half a head. Cut the meat in small bits, and put into a tosser, with a little gravy made of the bones, and some of the water it was boiled in, a bunch of sweet herbs, an onion, and a blade of mace. If you have a sweetbread, or young cockerels in the house, use the cockscombs; having first boiled them tender and blanched. Season the gravy with a little pepper, nutmeg, and salt: rub down some flour and butter, and give all a boil together; then remove the herbs and onion, and add a little cup of cream, but do not boil it in. Serve with small bits of bacon rolled round, and balls.

Veal Patties.

Mince some veal, that is not quite done, with a little parsley, lemonpeel, a scrape of nutmeg, and a little salt: add a little cream and gravy just to moisten the meat; and if you have any ham, scrape a little bit and add to it. Do not warm it till the patties are baked; and observe to put a bit of bread into each, to prevent the paste from rising into cake.

Fricandeau.

Cut a large piece out of the prime part of a leg of veal, about nine inches long, and half as broad and thick: beat it with a rolling pin; then lard it very thickly on one side and the edges. Put it in a small stewpan, with three pints of water, a pound of veal cut in small bits, and four or five ounces of lean ham, and an onion: simmer till the meat be tender; then take it out; cover to keep it moist, and boil the gravy till it be a fine brown, and much reduced: then put the larded meat back into the gravy, and pour a little of it over with a spoon. When quite hot, serve the meat and gravy round in the dish, with the following sauce in a boat.

Sorrel Sauce.

Wash a quantity of sorrel, and boil it tender in the smallest quantity of water you can: strain and chop it: stew it with a little butter, pepper, and salt; and if you like it high, add a spoonful of gravy.

Be careful to do it in a very well tinned saucepan; or if you have a silver one, or a silver mug, it is far better; as the sorrel is very sour, especially in spring.

Veal Olives.

Cut long thin collops: beat them, and lay on them thin slices of fat bacon, and over a layer of forcemeat seasoned high, with the addition of shred shalot, and Cayenne. Roll them tight, about the size of two fingers, but not more than two or three inches long: fasten them round with a small skewer: rub egg over, and fry them of a light brown.

Serve with brown gravy.

Calf’s Liver.

Sliced: seasoned with pepper and salt, and nicely broiled. Rub a bit of cold butter on it, and serve hot and hot.

Roasted.

Wash and wipe it: then cut a long hole in it, and stuff it with crumbs of bread, chopped anchovy, herbs, a good deal of fat bacon, onion, salt, pepper, a bit of butter, and an egg. Sew the liver up; then lard or wrap it in a veal caul, and roast it.

Serve with a good brown gravy, and currant jelly.

Sweetbreads.

Half boil, and stew in a white gravy. Add cream, flour, butter, nutmeg, salt, and white pepper: or, in brown, seasoned: or, after parboiling, cover with crumbs, herbs, and seasoning, and brown in a Dutch oven. Serve with butter, and mushroom catsup, or gravy.

Sweetbread Ragout.

Cut them about the size of a walnut: wash and dry them; then fry of a fine brown. Pour to them a good gravy, seasoned with salt, pepper, allspice, mushrooms, or the catsup. Strain, and thicken with butter, and a little flour. You may add truffles, and morels, and the mushrooms.

Veal Sausages.

Chop equal quantities of lean veal and fat bacon, a handful of sage, a little salt, pepper, and a few anchovies. Beat all in a mortar; and, when used, roll and fry it, and serve with fried sippets.

Spadbury’s veal and pork sausages, under the article of pork.

To make excellent meat of a Hog’s Head.

Split the head, take out the brains, cut off the ears, and sprinkle it with common salt for a day; then drain. Salt it well with common salt and saltpetre three days; then lay salt and head into water (a small quantity) for two days. Wash it, and boil it till all the bones will come out: remove them, and chop the head as quick as possible; having skinned the tongue, and taken the skin carefully off the head, to put under and over. Season with pepper, salt, a little mace or Jamaicas. Put the skin into a small pan: press the cut head in, and put the other skin over: press it down. When cold, it will turn out and make a kind of brawn. If too fat, you may put a few bits of lean pork to go through the same process. Add salt and vinegar, and boil with some of the liquor for a pickle to keep it.

To scald a Sucking Pig.

The moment the pig is killed, put it into cold water for a few minutes; then rub it over with a little rosin, beaten extremely small, and put it into a pail of scalding water half a minute; take it out, lay it on a table, and pull off the hair as quickly as possible. If any part does not come off, put it in again. When perfectly clean, wash it well with warm water, then in two or three cold waters, lest any flavour of the rosin should remain. Take off the four feet at the first joint: make a slit down the belly, and take out the entrails: put the liver, heart, and lights to the feet; wash the pig well in cold water, dry it thoroughly, and fold it in a wet cloth to keep it from the air.

To roast a sucking Pig.

If you can get it when just killed, it is of great advantage. Let it be scalded, which those who sell usually do. Then put some sage, crumbs of bread, salt, and pepper in the belly, and sew it up. Observe to skewer the legs back, or the under part will not crisp.

Lay it to a brisk fire till thoroughly dry; then have ready some butter, in a dry cloth, and rub the pig with it in every part. Dredge as much flour over as will possibly lie, and touch it no more till ready to serve; then scrape off the flour, with the greatest care, with a blunt knife: rub it well with the buttered cloth: take off the head while yet at the fire, and take out the brains, and mix them with the gravy that comes from the pig. Then take it up, and, without withdrawing the spit, cut it down the back and belly: lay it in the dish, and chop the sage and bread quickly, as fine as you can, and mix with a large quantity of fine melted butter, which has very little flour. Put the sauce into the dish after the pig has been split down the back, and garnished with the two ears, and the two jaws; the upper part of the head being taken off down to the snout.

In Devon, it is served whole if very small; the head only being cut off.

Pettitoes.

Boil them, and the liver and heart, in a small quantity of water very gently; then cut the meat fine, and simmer it with a little of the water and the feet split, till the latter be quite tender. Thicken with a bit of butter, a little flour, a spoonful of cream, a little salt, and pepper: give a boil up, and pour over a few sippets of bread, and put the feet on the mince.

Porker’s Head roasted.

Choose a fine young head, clean it well, and put bread and sage as for pig: sew it up tight, and put it on a string or hanging jack. Roast it as a pig, and serve with the same sauce.

Pig’s Cheek for boiling.

Cut off the snout, and clean the head: divide it, take out the eyes and the brains, and sprinkling the head with salt, let it drain twenty four hours. Salt it with common salt and saltpetre. Let it lie eight or ten days, if to be dressed without stewing with peas; but less, if to be dressed with peas; and it must be washed first, and then simmered till all is tender.

Collared Head.

Scour the head and ears nicely: take off the hair and snout, and take out the eyes and the brain: lay it in water one night; then drain and salt it extremely well with common salt and saltpetre, and let it lie five days. Boil it enough to remove the bones, then lay it on a dresser, turning the thick end of one side of the head towards the thin end of the other, to make the roll of equal size, sprinkle it well with salt and white pepper, and roll it with the ears; and if you approve, put the pig’s feet round the outside when boned; or the thin parts of two cowheels. Bind it in a cloth and with a broad tape, and boil it till quite tender; then put a good weight upon it, and do not remove the covering till cold.

If you choose it to be more like brawn, salt it longer, and let the proportion of saltpetre be greater, putting in some pieces of lean pork, and then cover it with cowheel, to look like the horn.

This may be kept in or out of pickle of salt, and water boiled, with vinegar; and is a very convenient thing to have in the house.

If likely to spoil, slice and fry it with or without butter.

To roast a Leg of Pork.

Choose a small leg of fine young pork, cut a slit in the knuckle with a sharp knife, and fill the space with sage and onion, chopped, and a little pepper and salt. When half done, score the skin in slices, but do not cut deeper than the outer rind.

Apple sauce and potatoes should be served to eat with it.

To boil a Leg of Pork

Salt it eight or ten days; when to be dressed, weigh it; let it lie half an hour in cold water to make it white; allow a quarter of an hour for every pound, and half an hour over from the time it boils up; skim it as soon as it boils, and frequently after. Allow water enough. Save some of it to make pease soup. Some boil in a very nice cloth, floured, which gives a very delicate look.

Serve pease pudding and turnips.

Different ways of dressing Pig’s Feet and Ears.

Clean them carefully, and soak them some hours: boil them tender, then take them out; and with some of the water boil some vinegar and a little salt, and when cold put over them. When to be dressed, dry them, divide the feet in two, and slice the ears; fry and serve them with butter, mustard, and vinegar. They may be done in butter or only floured.

Feet and Ears Fricasseed.

Put no vinegar in the pickle, if to be dressed with cream. Cut the feet and ears into neat bits, and boil them in a little milk; then pour that from them, and simmer in a little veal broth, with a bit of onion, mace and lemonpeel. Before you serve, add a little cream, flour, butter, and salt.

Jelly of Feet and Ears.

Clean and prepare as in the foregoing receipt; then boil in a very small quantity of water until every bone can be taken out; throw in half a handful of chopped sage, the same of parsley, a seasoning of pepper, salt, and mace, in fine powder; simmer till the herbs are scalded, then pour the whole into a melon form.

Pork Steaks.

Cut them from a loin or neck, of middling thickness: pepper and broil them, turning often. When nearly done, put the salt necessary, rub a bit of butter over, and serve the moment they are taken off the fire; a few at a time.

To cure Hams. First way.

Hang them a day or two; then sprinkle with a little salt, and drain them another day. Pound an ounce and a half of saltpetre, ditto petresalt, half an ounce of sal prunel, and a pound of the coarsest sugar: mix these well, and rub into each ham every day for four days, and turn it. If a small one, turn it every day for three weeks: if a large one, a week longer; but do not rub after four days. Before you dry it, drain and cover with bran. Smoke it ten days.

Another way. Second way.

Choose a leg of a hog that is fat and well fed: hang as above. To it, if large, put, in fine powder, one pound of bay salt, four ounces saltpetre, one pound of the coarsest sugar, and one handful of common salt, and rub it thoroughly. Lay the rind downwards, and cover the fleshy part with the salts. Baste it as often as you can with the pickle; the more the better. Keep it four weeks in the pickle, turning it daily. Drain and throw bran over it; then hang it in a chimney where wood is burnt, and turn it sometimes for ten days.

Another way. Third way.

Hang the ham and sprinkle with salt as above, then rub it daily with the following in fine powder: half a pound of salt, ditto bay salt, two ounces of saltpetre, and two ounces of black pepper, mixed with a pound and a half of treacle. Turn it twice a day in the pickle, for three weeks. Lay it in a pail of water for one night, wipe it quite dry, and smoke it two or three weeks.

Another way, that gives a high flavour. Fourth way.

When the weather will permit, hang the ham three days: mix an ounce of saltpetre with one quarter of a pound of bay salt, ditto common salt, ditto of coarsest sugar, and a quart of strong beer; boil them together, and pour over immediately on the ham; turn it twice a day in the pickle for three weeks. An ounce of black pepper, ditto of pimento, in finest powder, added to the above, will give still more flavour. Cover with bran when wiped, and smoke from three to four weeks, as you approve; the latter will make it harder, and more of the flavour of Wesphalia. Sew hams in hessings, i.e. coarse wrapper, if to be smoked where there is strong fire.

A method of giving a still higher flavour.

Sprinkle the ham with salt after it has hung two or three days: let drain; make a pickle of a quart of strong beer, half a pound of treacle, an ounce of coriander seeds, two ounces of juniper berries, an ounce of pepper, ditto pimento, an ounce of saltpetre, half an ounce of sal prunel, a handful of common salt, and a head of shalot, all pounded or cut fine. Boil these together a few minutes, and pour over the ham: this quantity for one of ten pounds. Rub and turn it every day, for a fortnight; then sew it up in a thin linen bag, and smoke it three weeks. Observe to drain it from the pickle, and rub it in bran previous to drying.

Hogs’ Cheeks to dry.

The snout being cut off, the brains removed, and the head cleft, but not cut apart on the upper side, rub it well with salt. Next day remove the brine, and salt it again; the following day cover the head with half an ounce of saltpetre, two ounces of bay salt, a little common, and four ounces of coarsest sugar. Let the head be often turned. In twelve days smoke for a week like bacon.

To dress Hams.

If long hung, put the ham into water a night, and either dig a hole in the earth, or let it lie on damp stones, sprinkled with water to mellow, two or three days, covering it with a heavy tub, to keep vermin from it. Wash it well, and put it into a boiler with plenty of water. Let it simmer four, five, or six hours, according to the size. When sufficiently done, if before the time of serving, cover it with a clean cloth doubled, and keep the dish hot over boiling water. Remove the skin, and strew raspings over the ham. Garnish with carrot. Preserve the skin as whole as possible, to keep over the ham when cold, which will prevent its drying.

The manner of curing Wiltshire Bacon.

Sprinkle each flitch with salt, and let the blood drain off for twenty four hours; then mix one pound and a half of coarse sugar, ditto of bay salt, not quite so much as half a pound of saltpetre, and a pound of common salt, and rub it well on the bacon, turning it every day for a month; then hang it to dry, and afterwards smoke it ten days. The above salts are for the whole hog.

To pickle Pork.

The quantities proportioned to the middlings of a pretty large hog; the hams and shoulders being cut off.

Mix and pound fine four ounces of saltpetre, one pound of coarse sugar, one ounce of sal prunel, and a little common salt. Having sprinkled the pork with salt, and drained it twenty four hours, rub it with the above, and then pack the pieces light in a small deep tub, filling up the spaces with common salt. Place large pebbles on the pork, to prevent its swimming in the pickle which the salt will produce.

Sausages.

Chop fat and lean of pork: season with sage, pepper, and salt; and you may add two or three pimentos. Half fill hog’s guts, that have been soaked and made extremely clean: or the meat may be kept in a very small pan, closely covered; and so rolled and dusted with a very little flour before they are fried.

An excellent Sausage to eat cold.

Season fat and lean pork with some salt, saltpetre, black and Jamaica pepper, all in finest powder, and well rubbed into the meat. The sixth day cut it small, and mix with it some shred shalot, or garlick, as fine as possible. Have ready an ox gut that has been scoured, salted, and soaked well, and fill it with the above stuffing: tie up the ends, and hang it to smoke as you would hams; but first wrap it in a fold or two of old muslin. It must be high dried. Some eat it without boiling, others like it boiled first. The skin should be tied in different places, making each link about eight or nine inches long.

Spadbury’s Oxford Sausages.

Chop a pound and a half of pork, and the same of veal, cleared of skins and sinews. Add three quarters of a pound of beef suet, mince and mix them. Steep the crumbs of a penny loaf in water, and with a little dried sage, pepper, and salt, mix with the meat.

Black Puddings.

The blood must be stirred with salt till cold. Put a quart of it, or rather more, to a quart of old grits, to soak one night; and soak the crumbs of a quartern loaf in rather more than two quarts of new milk, made hot. In the mean time prepare the guts, by washing and scraping with salt and water, and changing the water several times. Chop fine a little winter savory and thyme, a great deal of pennyroyal, pepper, salt, a few cloves, allspice, ginger, and nutmeg. Mix these with three pounds of beefsuet, and six eggs well beaten and strained, and then beat the bread, grits, &c. all up with the seasoning. When well mixed, have ready some hogs fat cut in large bits, and as you fill the skins put it in at proper distances. Tie them in links, having only half filled them, and boil them in a large kettle, pricking them as they swell, or they will burst. When boiled, lay them between clean cloths till cold, and hang them up in the kitchen. When to be used, scald them a few minutes in water, wipe and put them in a Dutch oven.

If there are not sufficient skins, put the stuffing in basons, and boil, covered with floured cloths; and slice and fry it when used.

Black Puddings another way.

Soak a quart of bruised grits in two quarts of hot milk, or less, if sufficient to swell them. Chop a good quantity of pennyroyal, some savory and thyme; salt, pepper, and Jamaica pepper, finely powdered. Mix the above with a quart of the blood, prepared as before: then half fill the skins, after they have been cleaned most thoroughly, and put as much of the leaf, i. e. fat of the pig, as shall make it pretty rich. Boil as before directed.

White Hogs’ Puddings.

When the skins have been soaked and cleaned as before directed, rinse and soak them all night in rosewater, and put into them the following filling; mix half a pound of blanched almonds, cut in seven or eight bits, with one pound of grated bread, two pounds of marrow or suet, one pound of currents, some beaten cinnamon, cloves, mace, and nutmeg, a quart of cream, yelks of six, and whites of two eggs, a little orange flour water, a little fine Lisbon sugar, some lemon peel, and citron sliced, and half fill the skins. Boil as before directed.

Hogs’ Lard.

Should be carefully melted in a jar, put into a kettle of water, and boiled and run into bladders that have been extremely well cleaned. The smaller they are, the better the lard keeps; as after the air reaches it, it becomes rank. Put in a sprig of rosemary when melted.

This being a most useful article for frying fish, it should be prepared with care. Mixed with butter it makes fine crust.

Pig’s Harslet.

Wash and dry some liver, sweetbreads, and fat and lean bits of pork; beating the latter with a rolling pin to make it tender. Season with pepper, salt, sage, and a little onion, shred fine. Put all when mixed into a cawl, and fasten it up tight with a needle and thread. Roast it on a hanging jack, or by a string. Or serve in slices with parsley for a fry.

Serve with a sauce of port and water, and mustard just boiled up, and put into the dish.

Loins and Necks of Pork, roast.

Shoulders and breasts put into pickle, or salt the former as a leg.

Rolled Neck.

Bone it. Put a forcemeat of chopped sage, a very few crumbs of bread, salt, pepper, and two or three pimentos over the inside: then roll the meat as tight as you can, and roast it slowly, and at a good distance at first.

To make a Pickle for Hams, Tongues, or Beef, if boiled and skimmed between each parcel of them, that will keep for years.

To two gallons of spring water put two pounds of coarse sugar, two pounds of bay, and two and a half pounds of common salt, and half a pound of saltpetre, in a deep earthen glazed pan, that will hold four gallons, and has a cover that will fit close. Keep the beef or hams as long as they will bear, before you put them into the pickle, and sprinkle them with coarse sugar in a pan, from which they must drain. Rub the hams, &c. well with the pickle, and pack them in close, putting as much as the pan will hold, so that the pickle may cover them. The pickle is not to be boiled at first. A small ham may lie fourteen days, a large one three weeks; a tongue twelve days; beef in proportion to its size. They will eat well out of the pickle without drying. When to be dried, let each piece be drained over the pan, and when it will drop no longer, take a clean sponge and dry it thoroughly. Six or eight hours will smoke them; and there should be only a little sawdust and wet straw burnt to smoke them; but if put into a baker’s chimney, sew them in coarse cloth, and hang them a week.

Excellent Bacon.

When the hog is divided, if a large one, the chine should be cut out. The bacon will be preserved from being rusty, if the spareribs are left in. Salt the bacon six days; then drain it from the first pickle. Mix as much salt as you judge proper with eight ounces of bay salt, four ounces of saltpetre, and one pound of coarse sugar, to each hog, the hams being first cut off. Rub the salts well in, and turn it every day for a month. Drain, and smoke a few days; or dry without, by hanging in the kitchen, not near the fire.

Mutton. The Haunch.

Keep as long as it can be preserved sweet, by the different modes of keeping. Let it be washed with warm milk and water, or vinegar, if necessary; but soak off the flavour from keeping. Put a coarse paste on strong paper, and fold the haunch in: set it at a great distance from the fire, and allow proportionable time for the paste, which do not remove till about thirty five or forty minutes before serving; then baste it perpetually. You will have brought the haunch nearer to the fire before you take off the paste, and must froth it up as you would venison.

A gravy must be made of a pound and a half of loin of old mutton, simmered in a pint of water to half, and no seasoning but salt. Brown it with a little burnt sugar, and send it up in the dish: but there should be much gravy in the meat; for though long at the fire, the distance and covering will prevent its being done dry.

Serve with currantjelly sauce.

Legs roasted, and onion or currantjelly sauce: or, boiled, with caper sauce and vegetables.

Necks are particularly useful, as so many dishes may be made of them; but they are not advantageous for the family. The bones should be cut short; which the butchers will not do unless particularly desired.

Note. When there is more fat to a neck or loin of mutton than is agreeable to eat with the lean, it makes an uncommonly good suet pudding, or crust for a meatpie, being cut very fine.

The best end of the neck boiled, and served with turnips: or roasted: or in steaks, in pies, or harrico.

The scrag stewed in broth, or with a small quantity of water, some small onions, a few peppercorns and a little rice, and served together.

Harrico.

Take off some of the fat, and cut the middle or best end of the neck into rather thin steaks. Put the fat into a fryingpan, and, flouring, fry them in it of a fine light brown, but not enough for eating. Put them in a dish while you fry the carrots, turnips, and onions; the former in dice, the latter sliced; but they must only be warmed, not browned, or you need not fry them. Then lay the steaks at the bottom of a stewpan, the vegetables over, and pour as much boiling water on them as will just cover: give one boil, skim well, and then set the pan on the side of the fire to simmer gently till tender: in three or four hours skim, and add pepper, salt, and one spoonful of catsup.

Mutton Pie.

Cut steaks from a loin or neck of mutton: beat them and remove some of the fat. Season with salt, pepper, and a little onion. Put a little water at the bottom of the dish, and a little paste on the edge; then cover with a moderately thick paste. Or raise small pies, and, breaking each bone in two to shorten it, season and cover it over, pinching the edge. When they come out, pour a spoonful of gravy, made of a bit of mutton, into each. The mutton should have hung.

Mutton and Potatoe Pie.

Season the steaks of a loin or neck; lay them in a dish: have ready potatoes mashed very thick, with some milk, and a bit of butter and salt, and cover the meat as with a very thick crust, and to come on the surrounding edge.

Mutton Pudding.

Season as above. Lay one layer of steaks at the bottom of the dish, and pour a batter of potatoes boiled and pressed through a colander, and mixed with milk and an egg, over them: then putting the rest of the steaks, and batter, bake it.

Batter with flour, instead of potatoes, eats well, but requires more egg, and is not so good.

Mutton Sausages.

Take a pound of the rawest part of a leg of mutton that has been either roasted or boiled: chop it extremely small: season with pepper, salt, mace, and nutmeg. Add six ounces of beef suet, some sweet herbs, two anchovies, and a pint of oysters, all chopped very small; a quarter of a pound of grated bread, some of the anchovy liquor, and all that came from the oysters; the yelks and whites of two eggs well beaten. Put it all, when well mixed, into a little pot, and use it by rolling it into balls or sausage shape, and fry them. If approved, a little shalot may be added; or garlick, which is a great improvement.

Mutton Steaks

Should be cut from a loin or neck that has hung. If the latter, the bones should not be long. They should be broiled on a clear fire, and seasoned when half done, and frequently turned; when, taking into a very hot dish, rub a bit of butter on each, and serve hot and hot the moment they are done.

They may be covered with forcemeat.

Mutton Collops.

Cut from that part of a well hung loin of mutton which is next the leg, some collops very thin. Take out the sinews. Season them with salt, pepper and mace, and strew over them shred parsley, thyme, and two or three shalots. Fry them in butter till half done. Add half a pint of gravy, a little juice of lemon, and a piece of butter rubbed in flour, and simmer the whole very gently five minutes. They should be served immediately, or they will be hard.

Lamb Steaks.

Fry a beautiful brown. Throw over them, when served, a good quantity of crumbs of bread fried, and crimped parsley: the receipt for doing which of a fine colour, is given under the article of vegetables.

Mutton and Lamb steaks, seasoned and broiled in buttered papers, either with crumbs and herbs, or without, are a genteel dish, and eat well.

Sauce for them, called sauce Robart, under the list of sauces.

Saddle or Loin of mutton, roasted: the former a fashionable dish.

Shoulder of mutton, roasted, and onion sauce. Bladebone broiled.

Shoulder of Mutton boiled with Oysters.

Hang it some days, then salt it well for two. Bone it, and sprinkle it with pepper, and a bit of mace pounded. Lay some oysters over it, and roll the meat up tight with a fillet. Stew it in a small quantity of water, with an onion, and a few peppercorns, till quite tender.

Have ready a little good gravy, and some oysters stewed in it: thicken with flour and butter, and pour over the mutton when the tape is removed. The stewpan should be kept close covered.

Breast of Mutton.

The superfluous fat being cut off, roast, and serve with stewed cucumbers: or, to eat cold, having covered it with chopped parsley: or half boiled, and then grilled before the fire, being covered with crumbs and herbs, and served with caper sauce: or boned, a good deal of the fat being taken off, and covered with bread, herbs, and seasoning; then rolled, and boiled, and served with chopped walnut, or capers and butter.

Rolled Loin of Mutton.

Hang the mutton, to be tender. Bone it, and lay a seasoning of pepper, pimento, mace, nutmeg, a few cloves, all in fine powder, over it. Next day prepare a stuffing as for a hare, beat the meat, and cover it with the stuffing, roll it tight, and fillet it. Half bake it in a slow oven: let it grow cold: remove the fat, and put the gravy into a stewpan: flour the meat, and put in likewise; stew till near ready, and add a glass of port wine, some catsup, an anchovy, and a little lemon pickle, half an hour before serving, which do in the gravy, and with jelly sauce. A few fresh mushrooms are a great improvement, but not if to eat like hare, nor add the lemon pickle.

Rumps, kidneys, livers, and hearts, well washed, seasoned, and broiled, and served with cold butter rubbed on them.

Steaks of Mutton, or Lamb and Cucumbers.

Quarter cucumbers, and lay them in a deep dish; sprinkle them with salt, and pour vinegar over. Fry chops of a fine brown, and put them in a stewpan: drain the cucumbers, and put over the steaks: put some sliced onions, pepper, and salt: pour hot water or weak broth on them: stew and skim well.

An excellent Hotch Potch.

Stew pease, lettuce, and onions, in a very little water, with a beef or ham bone. While doing, fry some mutton or lamb steaks, seasoned, of a nice brown. Three quarters of an hour before dinner put the steaks into a stewpan, and the vegetables over: stew them, and serve all together in a tureen.

Another Hotch Potch.

Knuckle of veal, and scrag of mutton, stewed with vegetables as above.

Mutton Ham.

Choose a fine grained leg of wether mutton, of twelve or fourteen pounds weight. Let it be cut ham shape, and hang two days: then put into a stewpan half a pound of bay salt, the same of common salt, two ounces of saltpetre, half a pound of coarsest sugar, all in powder: mix and make it quite hot; then rub it well into the ham, let it be turned in the liquor daily. At the end of four days put two ounces more of common salt: in twelve days take it out; dry, and hang it up in the wood smoke a week.

Mutton Cutlets in the Portuguese way.

Cut the chops, and half fry them, with sliced shalot or onion, chopped parsley, and two bayleaves; seasoned with pepper and salt. Then lay a forcemeat on a piece of white paper, put the chop on it, cover with forcemeat, and twist the paper up, leaving a hole for the end of the bones to go through. Broil on a gentle fire. Serve with sauce Robart; or, as the seasoning makes the cutlets high, a little gravy.

Lamb.

Leg boiled in a cloth to look as white as possible: the loin fried in steaks and served round, garnished with dried or fried parsley. Spinach to eat with it. Or dressed separately, or roasted.

Lamb’s Head and Hinge.

That of a house lamb is best, but either, if soaked in cold water, will be white. Boil the head separately till very tender, and have ready the liver and lights cut small. After being three parts boiled, stew them in a little of the water in which they were boiled. Season, and thicken with flour and butter, and serve the mince round the head.

Fore Quarter of Lamb.

Roasted whole, or separately. If left to be cold, chopped parsley should be sprinkled over it.

Lamb’s Fry.

Serve it fried a beautiful colour, and a good deal of dried or fried parsley over it.

Turkey to Boil.

Make a stuffing of bread, herbs, salt, pepper, nutmeg, lemonpeel, a few oysters or an anchovy, a bit of butter, some suet, and an egg. Put this in the crop, and fasten up the skin, and boil the turkey in a floured cloth, to make it very white. Have ready a fine oyster sauce, made rich with butter, a little cream, a spoonful of soy, if approved, and pour over the bird. Or, liver and lemon sauce.

Hen birds are best for boiling, and should be young.

Turkey to Roast.

The sinews of the legs should be drawn, whichever way it be dressed. The head should be twisted under the wing; and in drawing, care should be taken not to tear the liver, or let the gall touch it. Put a stuffing of sausage meat; or, if sausages are to be served in the dish, a bread stuffing. As this makes a large addition to the size of the bird, observe that the heat of the fire be constantly to that part; for the breast is frequently not enough done. A little strip of paper should be put on the bone to prevent scorching, while the other parts roast. Baste well, and froth it up. Gravy in the dish, and plenty of bread sauce in a sauce tureen.

Pulled Turkey.

Divide the meat of the breast by pulling instead of cutting; then warm it in a spoonful or two of white gravy, a little cream, grated nutmeg, salt, and a little flour and butter: warm, but do not boil it. The leg seasoned, scored, and broiled, put in the dish, with the above round it. Cold chicken does as well.

Turkey Patties.

Mince some of the white parts, and with grated lemon, nutmeg, salt, a very little white pepper, cream, and a very little bit of butter warmed. Fill the patties; they having been first baked with a bit of bread in each, to keep them hollow.

Pheasants and Partridges.

Roast as turkey, and serve with a fine gravy: in which put the smallest bit of garlick, and bread sauce. When cold, they may be made into excellent patties, but their flavour should not be overpowered by lemon.

Potted Partridge.

When nicely cleaned, season with the following, in finest powder: mace, Jamaica pepper, white pepper, and salt. Rub every part well; then lay the breasts downwards in a pan, and pack the birds as close as you possibly can. Put a good deal of butter on them; then cover the pan with a coarse flour paste, and a paper over: tie close and bake. When cold, put into pots, and cover with butter.

A very economical way of Potting Birds.

Prepare as before. When baked, and become cold, cut them in proper pieces for helping, and pack them close into a large potting pot, and leave, if possible, no spaces to receive the butter; with which, cover them, and one third part less will be requisite than when done whole.

To clarify Butter for potted things.

Put it in a sauce boat, and set that in a stewpan that has a little water in, over the fire. When melted, observe not to pour the milky parts over the potted things, they will sink to the bottom.

Fowls.

Boiled, with oyster, lemon, parsley, and butter, or liver sauces; or with bacon and greens.

Ditto roasted.

Egg sauce, bread sauce, or garnished with sausages, scalded, and parsley.

A large barndoor fowl well hung, stuffed in the crop with sausage meat, and gravy in the dish, and with bread sauce.

The head should be turned under the wing.

Fowl split down the back, peppered, salted, and broiled. Serve it with mushroom sauce.

To boil Fowl with Rice.

Stew the fowl very slowly, in some clear mutton broth, well skimmed, and seasoned with onion, mace, pepper, and salt. About half an hour before it be ready, put in a quarter of a pint of rice, well washed and soaked. Simmer till tender; then strain from the broth, and put the rice on a sieve before the fire. Keep the fowl hot; lay it in the middle of the dish, and the rice round it, without the broth; which will be very nice to eat as such; but the less liquor it is done with the better.

Fricassee of Chickens.

Boil them rather more than half in a small quantity of water: let them cool; then cut them up, and put them to simmer in a little gravy, made of the liquor they were boiled in, and a bit of veal or mutton, onion, mace, lemonpeel, white pepper, and a bunch of sweet herbs. When quite tender, keep them hot while you thicken the sauce thus: strain off, and put it back into the saucepan, with a little salt, a scrape of nutmeg, a bit of flour and butter: give it one boil; and when you are going to serve, beat up the yelk of an egg, add half a pint of cream, and stir them over the fire, but do not let it boil.

It will be equally good without the egg.

Another white Sauce, more easily made.

Take a little of the water that boiled the fowls, (which must be kept hot) and stew with it some cut onion, a bit of parsley, a blade of mace, and a bit of lemonpeel. Mix with this a bit of butter, flour, and little thick cream, and adding the chicken, warm it with the sauce.

The above for veal or rabbit; but if either are not sufficiently done before, then the cream and flour should be added just before serving, after the meat is a little stewed.

Davenport Fowls.

Hang young fowls a night: take the livers, hearts, and tenderest parts of the gizzards, shred very small, with half a handful of young clary, an anchovy to each fowl, one onion, and the yelks of four eggs, boiled hard, with pepper, salt, and mace to your taste. Stuff the fowls with this, and sew up the vents and necks quite close, that the water may not get in. Boil them in salt and water till near done; then drain, and put them into a stewpan, with butter enough to brown them. Then serve with fine melted butter, and a spoonful of catsup, of either sort, in the dish.

To pull Chicken.

Take off the skin, and pull the flesh off the bones of a cold fowl, in as large pieces as you can. Dredge with flour, and fry of a nice brown in butter; which drain from it, and simmer in a good gravy, well seasoned, and thickened with a little flour and butter. Add the juice of half a lemon.

Chicken Pie.

Cut up two young fowls: season with white pepper, salt, a little mace, and nutmeg, all in the finest powder; likewise a little Cayenne. Put the chicken, slices of ham or gammon, forcemeat, and hard eggs, alternately. If to be in a dish, put a little water; if in a raised crust, none. Against the pie be baked, have ready a gravy of knuckle of veal, with a few shank bones, seasoned with herbs, onion, mace, and pepper. If in a dish, put in as much gravy as will fill it: if in crust, let it go cold; then open the lid, and put in the jelly.

The Forcemeat for Pies of Fowls of any kind.

Pound fine, cold chicken, or veal, a bit of fat bacon, some grated ham, crumbs of bread, a very little bit of onion, parsley, knotted marjorum, and a very small bit of tarragon, chopped fine; a blade of mace, a little nutmeg, white pepper, and salt, in finest powder. When well mixed, add eggs to make into balls.

Chicken Curry.

Cut up the chickens before they are dressed, and fry them in butter, with sliced onions, till of a fine colour: or if you use those that have been dressed, do not fry them: lay the joints, cut in two or three pieces each, into a stewpan, with veal or mutton gravy, a clove or two of garlick, four large spoonfuls of cream, and some Cayenne: rub smooth one or two spoonfuls of curry powder, with a little flour, and a bit of butter, and add twenty minutes before you serve; stewing it on till ready. A little juice of lemon should be squeezed in when serving.

Slices of rare done veal, rabbit, or turkey, make a good curry.

A dish of rice boiled plain, as hereafter directed, must be always served to eat with curry.

Another Curry, and more quickly made.

Cut up a chicken or young rabbit; if the former, take off the skin, and rub each piece in a large spoonful of flour, mixed with half an ounce of curry powder: slice two or three onions, and fry in butter, of a fine light brown; then add the meat, and fry altogether, until the latter begin to brown; then put into a stewpan, and pour boiling water over to cover. Let it simmer very gently two or three hours until quite tender. If too thick, put more water half an hour before it be served.

Dressed fowl or meat may be done; but the curry will be better made of fresh.

Grouse.

Are to be roasted like fowls; but their heads twisted under the wing, and served with gravy, and bread sauce, or with sauce for wild fowl. See Sauces.

To pot Grouse, or Moor Game.

Pick, singe, and wash them very clean; then rub them inside and out with a high seasoning of salt, pepper, mace, nutmeg, and allspice. Lay them in as small a pot as will hold them: cover them with butter, and bake them in a slow oven. When cold, take off the butter, move the birds from the gravy, dry, and put them into pots that will just fit one or two; the former, where there are not many. Melt the former butter with some more, so as to completely cover the birds: but take care not to oil it. Do not let it be too hot.

To roast Widgeon, Duck, Teal, or Moorhen.

The flavour is best preserved without stuffing; but put some pepper, salt, and a bit of butter in the birds. Wild fowl require to be much less done than tame, and to be served of a fine colour.

The basting ordered in the foregoing receipt takes off a fishy taste which wild fowl sometimes have. Send up a very good gravy in the dish; and on cutting the breast, half a lemon squeezed over, with pepper on it, improves the taste.

Or stuff them with crumbs, a little shred onion, sage, pepper, and salt, but not a large quantity, and add a bit of butter. Slice an onion, and put into the dripping pan, with a little salt, and baste the fowls with it till three parts done; then remove that, and baste with butter. They should come up finely frothed, and not be overdone.

An excellent sauce under that article.

Duck to boil.

Choose a fine fat duck, salt it two days, then boil it slowly, and cover it with onion sauce made very white, and the butter melted with milk instead of water.

To roast duck: stuff or not, and serve with gravy.

Duck Pie.

Bone a full grown young duck, and a fine young fowl of a good size. Season them both well with mace, pepper, salt and allspice. Put the fowl within the duck, and a calf’s tongue that has been pickled red, and boiled, within the fowl. Make the whole to lie close. The skin of the legs and wings should be drawn inwards, that the body may lie smooth, Put the birds into a raised pie, or small piedish, and cover it with a thickish paste. Bake in a slow oven to eat cold.

The old Staffordshire raised pies were made as above, but a turkey was put over the duck, and a goose over that, forming a very large pie.

Goose to Roast.

After being carefully picked, the plugs of the feathers pulled out, and the hairs singed, let it be well washed, dried, and seasoned with onion, sage, pepper, and salt; fasten it tight at the neck and vent, and roast it.

When half done, let a narrow strip of paper be skewered on the breastbone. Baste it well, and observe to take it up the moment it is done, nicely frothed. When the breast rises, take off the paper, and observe to serve it before it fall, or it will be spoiled, and come to table flattened. Before it is cut up, cut the apron off, and pour in a wineglass of port wine and a teaspoonful of mustard. Cut the breast from one pinion to the other, if for a large party, without leaving meat to the wingbone.

Gravy, and apple sauce.

Green Goose Pie.

Bone two green geese, having first removed every plug, and singed them nicely. Wash them clean; season high with salt, mace, pepper, and pimento: put one within the other, and press them close into your piedish; put a good deal of butter over them, and bake with or without a crust: if the latter, a cover that will keep the steam in, must supply the place of a crust. It will keep long.

Giblet Pie.

Stew duck or goose giblets, when nicely cleaned, with onion, black pepper, and a bunch of sweet herbs, till tender. Let them become cold; then put them in the dish with two or three steaks of veal, beef, or mutton, especially if there are not giblets enough to make the sized pie that you wish. A little cup of cream, put in when baked, is a great improvement. Put the liquor in first.

Stewed Giblets.

As above, and add a little butter and flour. Serve with sippets, and cream just scalded in the sauce.

Stewed Pigeons.

Let them be fresh, and carefully cropped, drawn, and washed, then let them soak half an hour: in the mean time cut a hard white cabbage into water in slices as for pickling; drain it, and boil it in milk and water; drain it again, then lay some of it at the bottom of a stewpan; put the birds on it, being well seasoned, and cover them with the remainder; put a little broth into them, and stew till quite tender, before you serve. Add some cream, and a little flour and butter; give it one boil, and serve the cabbage round the pigeons.

Another way.

Stew in a good gravy, stuffed or not, and season well. Add a little mushroom catsup, or fresh mushrooms.

To pickle Pigeons.

Bone the pigeons, turn the inside out, and lard it: season with Jamaica pepper pounded very fine, and a little salt: turn the inside outward again, and tie the neck and rump with thread: put them in boiling water, let them boil a minute or two to plump; take them out, and dry with a cloth. The pickle must be made of an equal quantity of wine, and white wine vinegar; white pepper, Jamaica pepper, sliced nutmeg, ginger, and two or three bayleaves boiled. When it boils, put the pigeons into it, and let them boil fifteen minutes, if small; twenty, if large. Then take them out, wipe, and let them cool. When the pickle is cold, take off the fat, and put them in.

They must be kept in a stonejar, tied down with a bladder to exclude the air. You may in some, instead of larding, put a stuffing of hard yelks of eggs, and marrow, in equal quantities, spices, and sweet herbs.

Pigeons in Jelly.

Save some of the liquor in which a knuckle of veal has been boiled, as likewise a calf’s foot, or else simmer some isinglass in it, a blade of mace, an onion, a bunch of herbs, some lemonpeel, white pepper, and salt. When the pigeons are nicely cleaned and soaked, put them in a pan, and pour the liquor over them; and let them be baked, and remain in it till cold. When served, put jelly over and round them. Season them as you approve.

Potted Pigeons.

Take fresh ones: clean them carefully: season with pepper and salt: put them close in a small pan, and pour butter over: bake, and when cold take them out. Put into fresh pots, fit to serve to table, two or three in each, and pour butter over, using that which was baked with them as part. Observe, that it is necessary to put a good deal of butter if to be kept.

Note. Butter that has covered potted things is good for basting, and will make very good paste for meatpies. If to be high, add some mace, and a few Jamaica peppers to the seasoning.

Pigeon Pie.

Clean as before: season; and, if approved, put some parsley into the birds, and a bit of butter, with pepper and salt. Lay a beefsteak at the bottom of the dish, and hard eggs between each two birds, and a little water. If you have ham in the house, lay a slice on each: it is a great improvement to the flavour.

Observe, when you cut ham for sauce or pies, to turn it, and take from the underside instead of the prime.

Broiled Pigeons.

Slit them down the back: season, and broil. Serve with mushroom sauce; or melted butter, with a little mushroom catsup.

Roast Pigeons.

Should be stuffed with uncut parsley, seasoned; and served with parsley and butter. Asparagus, or peas, should be dressed to eat with them.

Parsley Pie.

Lay veal or fowl at the bottom of a pie dish, seasoned. Take a colander full of picked parsley, cover the meat with it, and pour some cream into the dish, and a spoonful or two of broth. Cover with crust.

Potatoe Pasty.

Boil, peel, and mash potatoes as fine as possible; then mix pepper, salt, and a little thick cream, or, if you prefer it, butter. Make a paste, and, rolling it out like a large puff, put the potatoe into it, and bake it.

Turnip Pie.

Season mutton chops with pepper and salt: lay them in the bottom of a dish, reserving the ends of the bones to lay over the turnips; which cut and season, and lay over the steaks till the dish be full. Put two or three spoonfuls of water in, and cover with crust. You may add a little onion.

Shrimp Pie. Excellent.

Take a quart of picked shrimps: if very salt, only season with mace, and a clove or two in fine powder; but if not salt, mince two or three anchovies, mix with the spice, and season them. Put some butter at the bottom of the dish, and over the shrimps, and a glass of sharp white wine. Put a good light paste over. They do not require long baking.

Cornish Pies.

Scald and blanch some broad beans: cut mushrooms, carrots, turnips, and artichoke bottoms, and with some peas, and a little onion, make the whole into a nice stew, with some good veal gravy. Bake a crust over a dish, with a little lining round the edge, and a cup within to keep it from sinking: open the lid, and put in the fricassee made hot; seasoning to your taste. Shalots, parsley, lettuce, celery, or any sort of vegetables that you like, may be added.

Fish Pie.

Put slices of cod that have been salted a night; pepper, and between each layer put a good quantity of parsley picked from the stalks, and some fresh butter. Pour a little broth, if you have any, or else a little water. Bake the pie; and when to be served, add a quarter of a pint of raw cream warm, with half a teaspoonful of flour. Oysters may be added.

Mackerel will do well; but do not salt it till used.

Soals, with oysters, seasoned with pounded mace, nutmeg, pepper, an anchovy, and some salt, make an excellent pie. Put in the oyster liquor, two or three spoonfuls of broth, and some butter, for gravy. When come from the oven, pour in a cup of thick cream.

To prepare Meat or Fowls for raised Pies.

When washed, put a good seasoning of spices and salt. Set it over a fire in a stewpan, that will just hold the meat: put a piece of butter, and, covering close, let it simmer in its own steam till it shrink. It must be cool before it be put into the pie. Chicken’s sweetbreads, giblets, pigeon’s meat, almost any thing will make a good pie, if well seasoned, and made tender by stewing. A forcemeat may be put under and over, of cold chicken or veal, fat bacon, shred ham, herbs, bread, and seasoning, bound with an egg or two, or in balls. Or instead of crust, use an earthen pie form.

Hares,

If old, should be larded with bacon, after having hung as long as they will keep, and being first soaked in pepper and vinegar.

If not paunched as soon as killed, hares are more juicy: but as that is usually done in the field, the cook must be careful to wipe it dry every day; the liver being removed, and boiled to keep for the stuffing.

Parsley put into the belly will help keep it fresh.

When to be dressed, the hare must be well soaked; and if the neck and shoulders are bloody, in warm water: then dry it, and put to it a large fine stuffing, made of the liver, an anchovy, some fat bacon, a little suet, herbs, spice, and bread crumbs, with an egg to bind it. Sew it up. Observe that the ears are nicely cleaned and singed. When half roasted, cut the skin off the neck to let out the blood, which afterwards fixes there. Baste with milk till three parts done, then with butter: and before served, froth it up with flour. It should be put down early, kept at a great distance at first from the fire, and drawn nearer by degrees.

Send a rich brown gravy in the dish; melted butter in one boat, and currantjelly in another.

To jug an old Hare.

After it is well cleaned and skinned, cut it up and season it with pepper, allspice, salt, pounded, mace, and a little nutmeg: put it into a jar, with an onion, a clove or two, a bunch of sweet herbs, and over all a bit of coarse beef. Tie it down with a bladder and leather quite close, and put the jar into a saucepan of water up to its neck, but no higher. Let the water boil gently five hours. When to be served, pour the gravy into a saucepan, and thicken it with butter and flour; or if become cold, warm the hare with the gravy.

Hare Soup. See Soups.

Hare Pie.

Season the hare after it is cut up. Put eggs, and forcemeat, and either bake in a raised crust or a dish: if in the former, put cold jelly gravy to it; if for the latter, the same hot; but the pie is to be eaten cold. See Jelly Gravy among similar articles.

Potted Hare.

Having seasoned, and baked it with butter over, cover it with brown paper, and let it grow cold. Then take the meat from the bones, beat it in a mortar, and add salt, mace, and pepper, if not high enough; a bit of fresh butter melted, and a spoonful of the gravy that came from the hare when baked. Put the meat into small pots, and cover it well with butter warmed. The prime should be baked at the bottom of the pot.

Broiled Hare and hashed.

The flavour of broiled hare is particularly fine. The legs or wings peppered and salted first, and when done, rubbed with cold butter.

The other parts warmed with the gravy and a little stuffing.

Rabbits

May be eaten various ways.

Roasted with stuffing and gravy.

Ditto without stuffing; and with liver, parsley, and butter: seasoned with pepper and salt.

Boiled, and smothered with onion sauce; the butter being melted with milk instead of water.

Fried, and served with dried or fried parsley, and liver sauce as above.

Fricasseed, as directed for chickens.

Made into Pies, as chickens, with forcemeat, &c. are excellent, when young.

To make Rabbit taste much like Hare.

Choose a young full grown one: hang it, with the skin on, two or three days: skin, and lay it unwashed in a seasoning of black and Jamaica peppers, in fine powder, putting some port wine into the dish, and baste it occasionally for forty hours: then stuff and roast it as hare, and with the same sauce. Do not wash off the liquor that it lay in.

Potted Rabbit.

Cut up and season three or four after washing them. The seasoning must be mace, pepper, salt, a little Cayenne, and a few pimentos in finest powder. Pack them as close as possible in a small pan, and make the surface smooth. Keep out the carcasses, having taken all the meat off them, and, putting a good deal of butter over the rabbits, bake them gently. Let them remain a day or two, then remove into potting pans; and add some fresh butter to that which already covers them.

SOUPS.

Giblet Soup.

Scald and clean three or four sets of goose or duck giblets; then set them on to stew with a scrag of mutton, or a pound of gravy beef, or bone of knuckle of veal, an oxtail, or some shankbones of mutton; three onions, a blade of mace, ten peppercorns, two cloves, a bunch of sweet herbs, and two quarts of water. Simmer till the gizzards are quite tender, which must be cut in three or four parts; then put in a little cream, a spoonful of flour rubbed smooth with it, and a spoonful of mushroom catsup; or two glasses of sherry or Madeira wine instead of cream, and some Cayenne.

Turnip Soup.

Stew down a knuckle of veal: strain, and let the broth stand still next day; take off the fat and sediment, and warm it, adding turnips cut in small dice: stew till they are tender: put a bit of pounded mace, white pepper, and salt. Before you serve, rub down half a spoonful of flour, with half a pint of cream, and boil with the soup: pour it on a roll in the tureen; but it should have soaked a little first in the soup, which should be as thick as middling cream.

Old Peas Soup.

Save the water of boiled pork or beef: if too salt, use only a part, and the other of plain water: or put some roast beef bones, or a ham or bacon bone to give a relish; or an anchovy or two. Set these on with some good whole or split peas, the smaller quantity of water at first the better: simmer till the peas will pulp through a colander; then set that, and some more of the liquor, besides what boiled the peas, some carrots, turnips, celery, and onion, or a leak or two, to stew till all be tender. Celery will take less time, and may be put in an hour before dinner. When ready, put fried bread in dice, dried mint rubbed small, pepper, and, if wanted, salt, in the tureen, and pour the soup upon them.

Green Peas Soup.

In shelling, divide the old from the young, and put the former, with a bit of butter, and a little water into a stewpan, and the old parts of lettuce, an onion or two, a little pepper and salt. Simmer till the peas will pulp through a colander; which when done, add to it some more water, and that which boiled the peas, the best parts of the lettuce, and the young peas, a handful of spinach cut small, pepper, and salt to taste. Stew till the vegetables are quite tender; and a few minutes before serving, throw in some green mint, cut fine.

Should the soup be too thin, a spoonful of rice flour, rubbed down with a bit of butter, and boiled with it, will give it consistence.

Note. If soup or gravy be too weak, the cover of the saucepan should be taken off, and the steam let out, boiling it very quick.

When there is plenty of vegetables, green peas soup needs no meat: but if approved, a pig’s foot, or a small bit of any sort, may be boiled with the old peas, and removed into the second process till the juices shall be obtained. Observe, three or four ounces of butter, will supply richness to a soup without meat, or make it higher with it.

Gravy Soup.

Wash a leg of beef, break the bone, and set it over the fire with five quarts of water, a large bunch of herbs, two onions, sliced and fried, but not burnt, a blade or two of mace, three cloves, twenty Jamaica peppers, and forty black. Simmer till the soup be as rich as you choose; then strain off the meat, which will be fit for the servants’ table. Next day take off the cake of fat, and that will warm with vegetables; or make a piecrust for the same. Have ready such vegetables as you choose to serve, cut in dice, carrot, and turnip, sliced, and simmer till tender. Celery should be stewed in it likewise; and before you serve, boil some vermicelli long enough to be tender, which it will be in fifteen minutes. Add a spoonful of soy, and one of mushroom catsup. Some people do not serve the vegetables, only boil for the flavour. A small roll should be made hot, and kept long enough in the saucepan to swell, and then be sent up in the tureen.

A rich White Soup.

Boil in a small quantity of water a knuckle of Veal, and scrag of mutton, mace, white pepper, two or three onions, and sweet herbs, the day before you want the soup. Next day take off the fat, and put the jelly into a saucepan, with a quarter of a pound of sweet almonds blanched, and beaten to a paste in a mortar with a little water to prevent oiling, and put to it apiece of stale white bread, or crumb of a roll; a bit of cold veal, or white of chicken. Beat these all to a paste with the almond paste, and boil it a few minutes with a pint of raw thick cream, a bit of fresh lemonpeel, and half a blade of mace pounded; then add this thickening to the soup. Let it boil up and strain it into the tureen: if not salt enough, then put it in. If macaroni or vermicelli be served, they should be boiled in the soup, and the thickening be strained after being mixed with a part. A small rasped roll may be put in.

Instead of the cream thickening, as above, ground rice, and a little cream may be used.

A plainer White Soup.

Of a small knuckle of veal, two or three pints of soup may be made, with seasoning as before, and both served together, with the addition of a quarter of a pint of good milk.

An excellent Soup.

A scrag or knuckle of veal, slices of undressed gammon, onions, mace, and a small quantity of water, simmered till very strong, and lower it with a good beef broth made the day before, and stewed until the meat is done to rags. Add cream, vermicelli, almonds as before, and a roll.

Carrot Soup.

Put some beef bones, with four quarts of the liquor in which a leg of mutton or beef has been boiled, two large onions, one turnip, pepper and salt, into a saucepan, and stew for three hours. Have ready six large carrots, cut thin after they are scraped; strain the soup on them, and stew till soft enough to pulp through a hair sieve or coarse cloth: then boil the pulp with the soup; which is to be as thick as pea ssoup. Use two wooden spoons to rub the carrots through. Make the soup the day before it is to be used. Add Cayenne.

Onion Soup.

To the water that has boiled a leg or neck of mutton, put carrots, turnips, and, if you have one, a shankbone, and simmer till the juices are obtained. Strain it on six onions previously sliced, and fried a light brown; with which simmer it three hours. Skim it carefully, and serve it. Put into it a little roll or fried bread.

Vegetable Soup.

Pare and slice five or six cucumbers, the inside of as many cos lettuces, a sprig or two of mint, two or three onions, some pepper and salt, a pint and half of young peas, and a little parsley. Put these, with half a pound of fresh butter, into a saucepan to stew in their own liquor near a gentle fire half an hour; then pour two quarts of boiling water to the vegetables, and stew them two hours: rub down a little flour into a teacup of water; boil it with the rest fifteen or twenty minutes, and serve it.

Another Vegetable Soup.

Peel and slice six large onions, six potatoes, six carrots, and four turnips: fry them in half a pound of butter: pour on them four quarts of boiling water, and toast a crust of bread as brown and hard as possible, but do not burn it: put that, some celery, sweet herbs, white pepper and salt, to the above: stew gently four hours, strain through a coarse cloth: have ready sliced carrot, celery, and a little turnip, and add to your liking; and stew them tender in the soup. If approved, you may add an anchovy, and a spoonful of catsup.

Spinach Soup.

Shred two handfuls of spinach, a turnip, two onions, a head of celery, two carrots, and a little thyme and parsley. Put all into a stewpot, with, a bit of butter the size of a walnut, and a pint of broth, or the water in which meat has been boiled; stew till the vegetables are quite tender: work them through a coarse cloth or sieve with a spoon; then with the pulp of the vegetables, and liquor, a quart of fresh water, pepper and salt, boil all together. Have ready some suet dumplings, the size of a walnut, and before you put the soup into the tureen, put them into it. The suet must not be shred too fine; and take care that it is perfectly fresh.

Scotch Leek Soup.

Put the boiling of a leg of mutton into a stew pot, with a quantity of chopped leeks, and pepper and salt; simmer them an hour, then mix some oatmeal with a little cold water quite smooth, pour it into the soup, and setting it on a slow part of the fire, let it simmer gently; but take care that it does not burn to the bottom.

Hare Soup.

Take an old hare that is good for nothing else than soup, cut in pieces, and put it with a pound and a half of lean beef, two or three shankbones of mutton well cleaned, a slice of lean bacon or ham; an onion, and a bunch of sweet herbs: pour on it two quarts of boiling water: cover the jar, in which you put these, with bladder and paper, and set it in a kettle of water: simmer till the hare is stewed to pieces: strain off the liquor, and give it one boil, with an anchovy cut in pieces, and add a spoonful of soy, and a little Cayenne and salt. A few fine forcemeat balls, fried of a good brown, should be served in the tureen.

Scotch Mutton Broth.

Soak a neck of mutton in water for an hour: cut off the scrag, and put into a stewpot with two quarts of water: as soon as it boils, skim it well and simmer it an hour and a half; then take the best end of the mutton, cut it into pieces, two bones in each, and put as many as you think proper, having cut off some of the fat. Skim it the moment the fresh meat boils up, and every quarter of an hour. Have ready four or five carrots, the same of turnips, and three onions, all cut, but not small, and put in time enough to be quite tender; two large spoonfuls of Scotch barley, first wetted with cold water. The meat should stew three hours. Salt to taste, and serve all together. Twenty minutes before serving, put in some chopped parsley.

It is an excellent winter dish.

Soups under the articles of their respective Meats.

Oxcheek Soup. Hessian Soup. Mock turtle, page [49] to 52.

Ox rump Soup.

Two or three rumps of beef, will make it stronger than a much larger proportion of meat without; and form a very nourishing soup.

Make it like gravy soup, and give it what flavour or thickening you like.

Soup A-la-sap.

Boil half a pound of grated potatoes, one pound of beef sliced thin, one pint of grey peas, one onion, and three ounces of rice, in six pints of water to five; strain it through a colander, then pulp the peas to it, and turn it into a saucepan again, with two heads of celery sliced: stew it tender, adding pepper and salt; and when you serve, fried bread.

Crawfish or Prawn Soup.

Boil six whitings, and a large eel; or the latter, and half a thornback, being well cleaned, with as much water as will cover them. Skim clean, and put in whole pepper, mace, ginger, parsley, an onion, a little thyme, and three cloves. Boil to a mash. Pick fifty crawfish, or a hundred prawns, pound the shells, and a little roll, after having boiled them with a little water, vinegar, salt and herbs. Pour this liquor over the shells in a sieve, then pour the other soup, clear from the sediment; chop a lobster, and add to it, with a quart of good beef gravy. Add the tails of the crawfish or the prawns, and some flour and butter; and season as necessary.

Portable Soup. A very useful thing.

Boil one or two knuckles of veal, one or two shins of beef, and a pound or more of fine juicy beef, in as much water only as will cover them. When the bones are cracked, out of which take the marrow, put any sort of spice you like, and three large onions. When the meat is done to rags, strain it off, and put in a very cold place. When cold, take off the cake of fat (which will make crust for servants’ pies), put the soup into a double bottom tin saucepan, set it on a pretty quick fire, but do not let it burn. It must boil fast, and uncovered, and be stirred constantly for eight hours; Put into a pan, and let it stand in a cold place a day; then pour it into a round soup China dish, and set the dish into a stewpan of boiling water on a stove, and let it boil, and be occasionally stirred, till the soup become thick and ropy; then it is enough. Pour it into the little round part at the bottom of cups or basons to form cakes; and when cold, turn them out on flannel to dry, and wrap them in it. Keep them in tin canisters. When to be used, melt in boiling water: and if you wish the flavour of herbs or any thing else, boil it first, and having strained the water, melt the soup in it.

This is very convenient for a bason of soup or gravy in the country, or at sea, where fresh meat is not always at hand.

Clear Gravy.

Slice beef thin: broil a part of it, over a very clear quick fire, just enough to give colour to the gravy, but not to dress it: put that, and the raw into a very nicely tinned stewpan, with two onions, a clove, or two Jamaica and black peppers, and a bunch of sweet herbs: cover it with hot water; give it one boil, and skim it well two or three times: then cover it and simmer till quite strong.

To draw Gravy that will keep a week.

Cut thin lean beef: put it in a fryingpan without any butter: set it on a fire covered, but take care it does not burn: let it stay till all the gravy that comes out of the meat be dried up into it again; then put as much water as will cover the meat, and let that stew away. Then put to the meat a small quantity of water, herbs, onions, spice, a bit of lean ham: simmer till it is rich, then keep it in a cool place. Remove the fat only when going to be used.

A rich Gravy.

Cut beef in thin slices, according to the quantity wanted: slice onions thin, and flour both: fry them of a light pale brown, but on no account suffer them to go black: put them into a stewpan, and pouring boiling water on the browning in the fryingpan, boil it up, and pour on the meat. Put to it a bunch of parsley, thyme, savory, and a small bit of knotted marjorum, and the same of tarragon, some mace, Jamaica and black peppers, a clove or two, and a bit of ham or gammon. Simmer till you have all the juices of the meat; and be sure to skim the moment it boils, and frequently after. If for a hare, or stewed fish, anchovy should be added.

The shankbones of mutton are a great improvement to the richness of the gravy; being first well soaked, and scoured clean.

Note. Jelly gravy for cold pies should be brown or white, as the meat or fowl is. It must be drawn without frying, relished, and made quite clean, by running it through a flannel bag. To give it the consistence of jelly, shanks, or knuckle, or feet, should be boiled with the bones.

Jelly to cover cold Fish.

Clean a maid: put it with three quarts of water, an ounce and a half of isinglass, a bit of mace, lemonpeel, white peppers, a stick of horseradish, and a little ham or gammon. Stew, till on trying with a spoon you find that it jellies: then strain it off, and add to it the whites of five eggs, a glass of sherry wine, and the juice of a lemon; give it another boil, and pour it through a jellybag till quite transparent.

When cold, lay it over the fish with a spoon.

Cullis, or brown Sauce.

Lay as much lean veal over the bottom of a stewpan as will cover it an inch thick: then cover the veal with thin slices of undressed gammon, two or three onions, two or three bayleaves, some sweet herbs, two blades of mace, and three cloves. Cover the stewpan, and set it over a slow fire. When the juices come out, let the fire be a little quicker. When the meat is of a fine brown, fill the pan with good beef broth, boil and skim it, then simmer an hour: add a little water, mixed with as much flour as will make it properly thick; boil it half an hour, and strain it.

This will keep a week.

Veal Gravy.

Make as directed for the cullis, leaving out the spice, herbs, and flour. It should be drawn very slowly: and if for white dishes, do not let the meat brown.

Bechamel or White Sauce.

Cut lean veal in small slices, and the same quantity of lean bacon or ham: put them in a stewpan, with a good piece of butter, an onion, a blade of mace, a few mushroom buttons, a bit of thyme, and a bayleaf. Fry the whole over a very slow fire, but not to brown it: add flour to thicken; then put an equal quantity of good broth, and rich cream. Let it boil half an hour, stirring it all the time: strain it through a soup strainer.

N. B. Soups and gravies are far better by putting the meat at the bottom of the pan, and stewing it, and the herbs, roots, &c. with butter, than by adding the water to the meat at first; and the gravy that is drawn from the meat, should be nearly dried up before the water is put to it. Do not use the sediment of gravies, &c. that have stood to be cold. When onions are strong, boil a turnip with them, if for sauce, which will make them mild.

Sauce for Wild Fowl.

Simmer ten minutes a teacupful of port wine, the same of good meat gravy, a little shalot, a little pepper, salt, a grate of nutmeg, and a bit of mace: put a bit of butter and flour: give one boil, and pour through the birds; which in general are not stuffed as tame, but may be done so, if liked.

Another for the same, or Ducks.

Serve a rich gravy in the dish: cut the breast in slices, but do not take them off; cut a lemon, and put pepper and salt on it; then squeeze it on the breast, and pour a spoonful of gravy over before you help.

Note. In cutting up any wild fowl, duck, goose, or turkey for a large party, if you cut the slices down from pinion to pinion, without making wings, there will be more prime pieces.

Sauce Robart for Rumps or Steaks.

Put into a saucepan a piece of butter the size of an egg: set it over the fire, and when browning, throw in a handful of sliced onions cut small: fry them brown, but do not let them burn: add half a spoonful of flour, shake the onions in it, give another fry, then put four spoonfuls of gravy, pepper, and salt, and boil gently ten minutes. Skim off the fat: add a teaspoonful of made mustard, a spoonful of vinegar, and half a lemon juice: boil, and pour round the steaks, which should be of a fine yellow brown, and garnished with fried parsley and lemon.

An Excellent Sauce for Carp or boiled Turkey.

Rub half a pound of butter with a teaspoonful of flour; put to it a little water, melt it, and add near a quarter of a pint of thick cream, and half an anchovy chopped fine, unwashed; set it over the fire, and as it boils up, add a large spoonful of real India soy. If that does not give it a fine colour, put a little more. Turn it into the sauce tureen, and put some salt, and half a lemon. Stir it well to prevent curdling.

Sauce for cold Fowl or Partridge.

Rub down in a mortar the yelks of two eggs boiled hard, an anchovy, two dessert spoonfuls of oil, a little shalot, and a teaspoonful of mustard, (all should be pounded before the oil be added) then strain it.

Vinagret for cold Fowl or Meat.

Chop fine mint, parsley, and shalot, and add salt, oil, and vinegar. It may be poured over, or sent in a boat.

Benton Sauce for hot or cold roast Beef.

Grate, or scrape very fine, horseradish, a little made mustard, some pounded white sugar, and four large spoonfuls of vinegar.

Serve in a saucer.

To melt Butter.

On a clean trencher, mix a little flour to a large piece of butter, in the proportion of a teaspoonful to a full quarter of a pound; then put into a saucepan, and pour on it two large spoonfuls of hot water; set it on the fire, and let it boil quick. You should stir it round one way, and serve it as soon as ready.

On the goodness of this depends the look and flavour of every sauce in which it is put.

Lobster Sauce.

Pound the spawn, and two anchovies: pour on two spoonfuls of gravy: strain it into some butter melted as above; then put in the meat of the lobster, give one boil, and add a squeeze of lemon.

Another way.

Leave out the anchovies and gravy, and do as above, with a little salt, and catsup, or not, as you like. Many prefer the flavour of the lobster and salt only.

Shrimp Sauce.

If not picked at home, pour a little water over to wash, and put them to butter melted thick and smooth: give them one boil, and add the juice of lemon.

Anchovy Sauce.

Chop one or two without washing: put to some flour and butter, and a little drop of water: stir it over the fire till it boil once or twice. When the anchovies are good, they will be dissolved; and the colour will be better than by the usual way.

Fish Sauce without Butter.

Simmer very gently a quarter of a pint of vinegar, half a pint of water (which must not be hard) with an onion, half a handful of horseradish, and the following spices lightly bruised: four cloves, two blades of mace, and half a teaspoonful of black pepper. When the onion is quite tender, chop it small with two anchovies: and set the whole on the fire to boil for a few minutes, with a spoonful of catsup. Mean time, have ready and well beaten the yelks of three fresh eggs: strain; mix in the liquor by degrees with them; and when well mixed, set the saucepan over a gentle fire, keeping a bason in one hand, into which toss the sauce to and fro, shaking the saucepan over the fire, that the eggs may not curdle. Do not boil, only let the sauce be hot enough to give the thickness of melted butter.

Lemon Sauce.

Cut thin slices of lemon into very small dice, and put into melted butter; give one boil, and pour over boiled fowls.

Liver Sauce.

Chop boiled liver of rabbits or fowls, and do as above, with a very little pepper and salt, and some parsley.

A very good Sauce, especially to hide the bad colour of Fowls.

Cut the livers, slices of lemon in dice, scalded parsley, and hard eggs: add salt, and mix with butter: boil up, and pour over the fowls.

Or for roast rabbit.

Egg Sauce.

Boil the eggs hard, and cut them in small pieces: then put them to melted butter.

Buttered Eggs.

Beat four or five eggs, yelk and white together: put a quarter of a pound of butter in a bason and then put that in boiling water; stir it till melted: then pour that butter and the eggs into a saucepan. Keep a bason in your hand: just hold the saucepan in the other over a slow part of the fire, shaking it one way; as it begins to warm, pour it into a bason, and back; then hold it again over the fire, stirring it constantly in the saucepan, and pouring it into the bason, more perfectly to mix the egg and butter, until they shall be hot without boiling.

Serve on toasted bread; or in a bason to eat with salt fish or red herrings.

Onion Sauce.

Peel, and boil onions tender: squeeze the water from them; then chop, and add butter that has been melted rich and smooth as before, but with a little good milk instead of water: boil up once, and serve for boiled rabbits, partridges, scrag, or knuckle of veal; or roast mutton.

Oyster Sauce.

Save the liquor in opening, and boil with the beards, a bit of mace, and lemonpeel. Mean time throw the oysters into cold water, and drain it off. Strain the liquor, and put it into a saucepan with them, and as much butter, mixed with a little milk, as will make sauce enough; a little flour being previously rubbed with it.

Set them over the fire, stir all the time; and when the butter has boiled once or twice, take them off, and keep the saucepan near, but not on the fire; for if done too much, the oysters will be hard. Squeeze a little lemonjuice, and serve.

If for company, a little cream is a great improvement. Observe the oysters will thin the sauce, and put butter accordingly.

Bread Sauce.

Boil a large onion, cut in four, with some black peppers, and milk, until the former be quite a pap. Pour the milk strained on grated white stale bread, and cover it. In an hour put it into a saucepan, with a good piece of butter, mixed with a little flour: boil the whole up together, and serve.

Some people like the bread pulped through a colander before the butter be added. A large spoonful of cream improves it.

Little Eggs for Pies or Turtles.

Boil three eggs hard: beat the yelks fine with the raw yelk of an egg; then make up the paste into small eggs, and throw them into a little boiling water to harden.

Fish Sauce A-la-Craster.

Thicken a quarter of a pound of butter with flour, and brown it; then put to it a pound of the best anchovies, cut small, six blades of pounded mace, ten cloves, forty black and Jamaica peppers, a few small onions, a faggot of sweet herbs; namely, savory, thyme, basil, and knotted marjorum; a little parsley, and sliced horseradish. On these pour half a pint of the best sherry wine, and a pint and a half of strong gravy: simmer all gently for twenty minutes; then strain it through a sieve, and bottle it for use: the way of which, is to boil some of it in the butter, as melting.

A very fine Fish Sauce.

Put into a very nice tin saucepan, a pint of fine port wine, one gill of mountain, half a pint of walnut catsup that is fine, twelve anchovies, and the liquor that belongs to them, one gill of walnut pickle, the rind and juice of a large lemon, four or five shalots, Cayenne to taste, three ounces of scraped horseradish, three blades of mace, and two teaspoonfuls of made mustard: boil gently, till the rawness go off, then put it in small bottles for use.

Cork very close, and seal the top.

Camp Vinegar.

Slice a large head of garlick, and put it into a widemouthed bottle, with half an ounce of Cayenne, two teaspoonfuls of real soy, two of walnut catsup, four anchovies chopped, a pint of vinegar, of cochineal enough to give the colour of lavender drops. Let it stand six weeks, then strain off quite clear, and keep in small bottles, sealed up.

Lemon Pickle.

Wipe six lemons: cut each into eight pieces: put on them a pound of salt, six large cloves of garlick, two ounces of horseradish, sliced thin; likewise of cloves, mace, nutmeg, and Cayenne, a quarter of an ounce each, and two ounces of flour of mustard; to these put two quarts of vinegar: boil a quarter of an hour in a well tinned saucepan, or which is better, do it in a strong jar, in a kettle of boiling water, or set the jar on the hot hearth till done. Set the jar by, and stir it daily for six weeks. Keep the jar close covered. Put into small bottles.

Shalot Vinegar.

Split six or eight shalots: put them into a quart bottle: fill it up with vinegar: stop it; and in a month it will be fit for use.

Essence of Anchovies.

Take a dozen of anchovies, chop them, and without the bone, but with some of their own liquor strained: add them to sixteen large spoonfuls of water: boil gently till dissolved, which will be in a few minutes. When cold, strain and bottle it.

Mushroom Catsup.

Take the largest broad mushrooms, break them into an earthen pan, strew salt over, and stir them now and then for three days. Then let them stand for twelve, till there is a thick scum over. Strain, and boil the liquor with Jamaica and black peppers, mace, ginger, a clove or two, and some mustardseed. When cold, bottle it, and tie a bladder over the cork. In three months boil it again with some fresh spice, and it will then keep a twelvemonth.

Mushroom Catsup, another way.

Take a stewpan full of the large flap mushrooms, that are not wormeaten, and the skins and fringe of those you have picked; throw a handful of salt among them, and set them by a slow fire. They will produce a great deal of liquor, which you must strain; and put to it four ounces of shalots, two cloves of garlick, a good deal of pepper, ginger, mace, cloves, and a few bayleaves. Boil and skim very well. When cold, cork close. In two months boil it up again, with a little fresh spice, and a stick of horseradish, and it will then keep the year; which mushroom catsup rarely does, if not boiled a second time.

Walnut Catsup of the finest sort.

Boil a gallon of the expressed juice of walnuts when they are tender, and skim it well: then put in two pounds of anchovies, bones and liquor, ditto of shalots, one ounce of cloves, ditto of mace, ditto of pepper, and one clove of garlick. Let all simmer till the shalots sink; then put the liquor into a pan till cold. Bottle, and divide the spice to each. Cork closely, and tie a bladder over.

It will keep twenty years, and is not good the first. Be very careful to express the juice at home; for it is rarely unadulterated, if bought.

Some people make liquor of the outside shell when the nut is ripe; but neither the flavour nor colour is then so fine.

Cockle Catsup.

Open the cockles: scald them in their own liquor: add a little water when the liquor settles, if you have not enough: strain through a cloth, then season with every savory spice; and if for brown sauce, add port wine, anchovies, and garlick; if for white, omit these, and put a glass of sherry wine, lemonjuice and peel, mace, nutmeg, and white pepper. If for brown, burn a bit of sugar for colouring.

It is better to have cockles enough, than to add water; and they are cheap.

Mushroom Powder.

Wash half a peck of large mushrooms while quite fresh, and free them from grit and dirt with flannel. Scrape out the black part clean, and do not use any that are wormeaten: put them into a stewpan over the fire without water, with two large onions, some cloves, a quarter of an ounce of mace, and two spoonfuls of white pepper, all in powder. Simmer and shake them till all the liquor be dried up, but be careful they do not burn. Lay them on tins or sieves in a slow oven, till they are dry enough to beat to powder; then put the powder in small bottles, corked and tied closely, and keep in a dry place.

A teaspoonful will give a very fine flavour to any soup or gravy, or any sauce; and it is to be added just before serving, and one boil given to it after it is put in.

To dry Mushrooms.

Wipe them clean; and of the large take out the brown, and peel off the skin. Lay them on paper to dry in a cool oven, and keep them in paper bags in a dry place. When used, simmer them in the gravy, and they will swell to near their former size. To simmer them in their own liquor till it dry up into them, shaking the pan, then drying on tin plates, is a good way, with spice or not, as above, before made into powder.

Tie down with bladder, and keep in a dry place, or in paper.

Sugar Vinegar.

To every gallon of water, put two pounds of the very coarsest sugar: boil and skim thoroughly; then put one quart of cold water for every gallon of hot. When cool, put into it a toast spread with yeast. Stir it nine days; then barrel, and set it in a place where the sun will lie on it, with a bit of slate on the bunghole.

When sufficiently sour, it may be bottled: or may be used from the cask, with a wooden spigot and faucet.

Gooseberry Vinegar.

Boil spring water; and when cold, put to every three quarts, a quart of bruised ripe gooseberries in a large tub. Let them remain sixty hours, stirring often: then strain through a hair bag, and to each gallon of liquor add a pound of the coarsest sugar. Put it into a barrel, and a toast and yeast, cover the bunghole with a bit of slate, &c. as above. The greater quantity of sugar and fruit, the stronger the vinegar.

Wine Vinegar.

After making raisin wine, when the fruit has been strained, lay it on a heap to heat: then to every hundred weight put fifteen gallons of water. Set the cask, and put yeast, &c. as before.

As vinegar is so necessary an article in a family, and one on which so great a profit is made, a barrel or two might always be kept preparing, according to what suited. If the raisins of wine were ready, that kind might be made: if a great plenty of gooseberries made them cheap, that sort; or if neither, then the sugar vinegar, so that the cask may not be left empty, and grow musty.

Kitchen Pepper.

Mix in the finest powder, one ounce of ginger; of cinnamon, black pepper, nutmeg, and Jamaica pepper, half an ounce of each; ten cloves, and six ounces of salt. Keep it in a bottle. It is an agreeable addition to any brown sauces or soups.

Spice in powder, kept in small bottles, close stopped, goes much further than when used whole. It must be dried before pounded; and should be done in quantities that may be wanted in three or four months. Nutmeg need not be done; but the others should be kept in separate bottles, with a little label on each.

Browning, to colour and flavour made dishes.

Beat to powder four ounces of doubly refined sugar: put it into a very nice iron fryingpan, with one ounce of fine fresh butter: mix it well over a clear fire, and when it begins to froth, hold it up higher. When of a very fine dark brown, pour in a small quantity of a pint of port wine; and the whole by very slow degrees, stirring all the time. Put to the above half an ounce of Jamaica, and the same of black pepper, six cloves of shalots peeled, three blades of mace bruised, three spoonfuls of mushroom, and the same of walnut catsup, some salt, and the finely pared rind of a lemon. Boil gently fifteen minutes; pour it into a bason till cold; take off the scum, and bottle for use.

To make Sprats taste like Anchovies.

Salt them well, and let the salt drain from them. In twenty four hours wipe them dry, but do not wash them. Mix four ounces of common salt, an ounce of bay salt, an ounce of saltpetre, a quarter of an ounce of sal prunel, and half a teaspoonful of cochineal, all in the finest powder. Sprinkle it among three quarts of the fish, and pack them in two stone jars. Keep in a cold place, fastened down with a bladder.

These are pleasant on bread and butter: but have the best for sauce.

To keep Anchovies when the liquor dries.

Pour on them beef brine.

To keep Capers.

Add fresh vinegar, that has been scalded, and become cold; and tie them close, to keep out the air.

To make Mustard.

Mix the best Durham flour of mustard by degrees, with boiling water, to a proper thickness, rubbing it perfectly smooth: add a little salt, and keep it in a small jar, close covered; and put only as much into the glass as will be used soon; which should be wiped daily round the edges.

Another way for immediate use.

Mix the mustard with new milk by degrees, to be quite smooth, and add a little raw cream. It is much softer this way, is not bitter, and will keep well.

The patent mustard is by many preferred, and it is perhaps as cheap, being always ready: and if the pots are returned, three pence is allowed for each.

A teaspoonful of sugar to half a pint of mustard, is a great improvement, and softens it.

PICKLES.

India.

Lay a pound of white ginger in water one night: then scrape, slice, and lay it in salt in a pan till the other ingredients shall be ready.

Peel, slice, and salt a pound of garlick three days; then put it in the sun to dry. Salt and dry long pepper in the same way.

Prepare various sorts of vegetables thus:

Quarter small white cabbages: salt three days: squeeze and set them in the sun to dry.

Cauliflowers cut in their branches: take off the green from radishes: cut celery in three inch lengths: ditto French beans whole, likewise the shoots of alder, which will look like bamboo. Apples and cucumbers, choose of the least seedy sort; cut them in slices, or quarters, if not too large. All must be salted, drained, and dried in the sun, except the latter; over which you must pour boiling vinegar, and, in twelve hours, drain them, but no salt must be used.

Put the spice, garlick, a quarter of a pound of mustardseed, and as much vinegar as you think enough for the quantity you are to pickle, into a large stonejar, and one ounce of turmeric to be ready against the vegetables shall be dried. When they are ready, observe the following directions: put some of them into a two quart stonejar, and pour over them one quart of boiling vinegar: next day take out those vegetables, and when drained, put them into a large stock jar, and boiling the vinegar, pour it over some more of the vegetables; let them lie a night, and do as above. Thus proceed till you have cleansed each set from the dust which must inevitably fall on them by being so long in doing: then, to every gallon of vinegar, put two ounces of flour of mustard, mixing, by degrees, with a little of it boiling hot. The whole of the vinegar should have been previously scalded, but left to be cool before put to the spice. Stop the jar tight.

This pickle will not be ready for a year; but you may make a small jar for eating in a fortnight, by only giving them one scald in water, after salting and drying as above, but without the preparative vinegar; then pour the vinegar that has the spice and garlick, boiling hot over. If at any time it be found that the vegetables have not swelled properly, boiling the pickle, and pouring it over them hot, will plump them.

English Bamboo, to Pickle.

Cut the large young shoots of alder, which put out in the middle of May, (the middle stalks are most tender) peel off the outward peel, or skin, and lay them in salt and water, very strong, one night. Dry them piece by piece in a cloth. Have in readiness a pickle thus made and boiled. To a quart of vinegar put an ounce of white pepper, an ounce of sliced ginger, a little mace and pimento, and pour boiling on the alder shoots, in a stonejar: stop close, and set by the fire two hours, turning the jar often, to keep scalding hot. If not green when cold, strain, off the liquor, and pour boiling hot again; keeping it hot as before. Or, if you intend to make Indian pickle, the above shoots are a great improvement to it: in which case you need only pour boiling vinegar and mustardseed on them; and keep them till your jar of pickles shall be ready to receive them.

Melon Mangoes.

There is a particular sort for this purpose which the gardeners know. Cut a square small piece out of one side, and through that take out the seeds, and mix with them mustard seeds and shred garlick; stuff the melon as full as the space will allow, and replace the square piece. Bind it up with a small new packthread. Boil a good quantity of vinegar, to allow for wasting, with peppers, salt, ginger, and pour boiling hot over the mangoes four successive days; the last, put flour of mustard, and scraped horseradish into the vinegar just as it boils up. Stop close. Observe that there is plenty of vinegar. All pickles are spoiled if not well covered. Mangoes should be done soon after they are gathered.

Pickled Onions.

In the month of September, choose the small white round onions, take off the brown skin; have ready a very nice tin stewpan of boiling water; throw in as many onions as will cover the top. As soon as they look clear on the outside, take them up as quick as possible with a slice, and lay them on a clean cloth, cover them close with another, and scald some more, and so on. Let them lie to be cold, then put them in a jar, or glass widemouth bottle, and pour over them the best white wine vinegar, just hot, but not boiling. When cold, cover them.

Cucumbers and Onions sliced.

Cut them in slices, and sprinkle salt over them: next day drain them for five or six hours, then put them into a jar, and pour boiling vinegar over them, keeping in a warm place. The slices should be thick. Repeat the boiling vinegar, and stop instantly; and so on till green.

Pickled sliced Cucumbers, another way.

Slice large unpared cucumbers, an inch thick; slice onions, and put both into a broad pan: strew a good deal of salt among them. In twenty four hours drain them, and then lay them on a cloth to dry. Put them in small stonejars, and pour in the strongest plain vinegar, boiling hot: stop the jars close. Next day boil it again, and pour over, and thus thrice; the last time add whole white pepper, and a little ginger. Keep close covered.

Young Cucumbers.

Choose nice young gherkins; spread them on dishes; salt them, and let them lie a week: drain them, and, putting them in a jar, pour boiling vinegar over them. Set them near the fire, covered with plenty of vineleaves. If they do not become a tolerable good green, pour the vinegar into another jar, set it over the hot hearth, and when it boils, pour it over them again, covering with fresh leaves; and thus do till they are of as good a colour as you wish: but as it is now known, that the very fine green pickles are made so by using brass or bell metal vessels, which, when vinegar is put into them, become highly poisonous, few people like to eat them.

Note. Acids dissolve the lead in the tinning of saucepans. Pickles should never be kept in glazed jars, but in stone or glass; and vinegar, or any acids, should be boiled, by putting them in jars of stone, over a hot hearth, or in a kettle of water.

To Pickle Walnuts.

When they will bear a pin to go into them, put on them a brine of salt and water boiled, and strong enough to bear an egg, being quite cold first. It must be well skimmed while boiling. Let them soak twelve days, then drain them, and pour over them in the jar a pickle of the best white wine vinegar, with a good quantity of pepper, pimento, ginger, mace, cloves, mustardseed, and horseradish; all boiled together, but cold. To every hundred of walnuts, put six spoonfuls of mustardseed, and two or three heads of garlick, or shalot; but the latter is least strong.

Thus done, they will be good for several years, if kept close covered. The air will soften them. They will not be fit to eat under six months.

The pickle will serve as good catsup, when the walnuts are used.

Nasturtions, for Capers.

Keep them a few days after they are gathered; then pour boiling vinegar over them, and when cold, cover.

They will not be fit to eat for some months; but are then finely flavoured, and by many preferred to capers.