Mince the onion and bacon very fine indeed, put them into a saucepan and fry a good brown, then add half the gravy, and stir until a sort of half glaze. Rub the tomatoes through a sieve and stir them in with the rest of the gravy, bring to the boil. Cut the meat into strips and put it in with a little salt and pepper, and simmer very gently for about three hours. While it is cooking put the milk on to boil, mix the semolina with a little cold milk, and stir it in; cook it until the spoon will come out quite clean, then turn it on to a dish till cold. Cut it into squares and lay some in a deep dish, sprinkle with grated cheese, then more semolina and more cheese. Pour over this some of the gravy in which the meat is cooking, and put it in the oven to get hot. Dish up the meat and pour the sauce over it. Send the two dishes to table together, quite hot.
Take a china pot or bowl, and fill it as follows: at the bottom lay some fresh butter; then put in three or four beef-steaks larded with bacon; then cut some veal-steaks from the leg; hack them, and wash them over with the yolk of an egg, and afterwards lay it over with forc'd-meat, and roll it up, and lay it in with young chickens, pigeons and rabbets, some in quarters, some in halves; sweet-breads, lamb-stones, cocks-combs, palates after they are boiled, peeled, and cut in slices: tongues, either hogs or calves, sliced, and some larded with bacon: whole yolks of hard eggs, pistachia-nuts peeled, forced balls, some round, some like an olive, lemon sliced, some with the rind on, barberries and oysters: season all these with pepper, salt, nutmeg, and sweet-herbs, mix'd together after they are cut very small, and strew it on every thing as you put it in your pot: then put in a quart of gravy, and some butter on the top, and cover it close with a lid of puff-paste, pretty thick. Eight hours will bake it.
This is a plain family dish, and is never provided for company. Take a nice but not a fat piece of fresh beef. Wash it, rub it with salt, and place it on a trivet in a deep block tin or iron pan. Pour a little water into the bottom, and put under and round the trivet a sufficiency of pared potatoes, either white or sweet ones. Put it into a hot oven, and let it bake till thoroughly done, basting it frequently with its own gravy. Then transfer it to a hot dish, and serve up the potatoes in another. Skim the gravy, and send it to table in a boat. Or you may boil the potatoes, mash them with milk, and put them into the bottom of the pan about half an hour before the meat is done baking. Press down the mashed potatoes hard with the back of a spoon, score them in cross lines over the top, and let them, brown under the meat, serving them up laid round it. Instead of potatoes, you may put in the bottom of the pan what is called a Yorkshire pudding, to be baked under the meat. To make this pudding,--stir gradually four table-spoonfuls of flour into a pint of milk, adding a salt-spoon of salt. Beat three eggs very light, and mix them gradually with the milk and flour. See that the batter is not lumpy. Do not put the pudding under the meat at first, as if baked too long it will be hard and solid. After the meat has baked till the pan is quite hot and well greased with the drippings, you may put in the batter; having continued stirring it till the last moment. If the pudding is so spread over the pan as to be but an inch thick, it will require about two hours baking, and need not be turned. If it is thicker than an inch, you must (after it is brown on the top) loosen it in the pan, by inserting a knife beneath it, and having cut it across into four pieces, turn them all nicely that the other side may be equally done. But this pudding is lighter and better if laid so thin as not to require turning. When you serve up the beef lay the pieces of pudding round it, to be eaten with the meat. Veal may be baked in this manner with potatoes or a pudding. Also fresh pork.
The best way of cooking lamb is to roast it; when drest otherwise it is insipid, and not so good as mutton. A hind-quarter of eight pounds will be done in about two hours; a fore-quarter of ten pounds, in two hours and a half; a leg of five pounds will take from an hour and a quarter to an hour and a half; a loin about an hour and a half. Lamb, like veal and pork, is not eatable unless thoroughly done; no one preferring it rare, as is frequently the case with beef and mutton. Wash the meat, wipe it dry, spit it, and cover the fat with paper. Place it before a clear brisk fire. Baste it at first with a little salt and water, and then with its own drippings. Remove the paper when the meat is nearly done, and dredge the lamb with a little flour. Afterwards baste it with butter. Do not take it off the spit till you see it drop white gravy. Prepare some mint sauce by stripping from the stalks the leaves of young green mint, mincing them very fine, and mixing them with vinegar and sugar. There must be just sufficient vinegar to moisten the mint, but not enough to make the sauce liquid. Send it to table in a boat, and the gravy in another boat. Garnish with sliced lemon. In carving a quarter of lamb, separate the shoulder from the breast, or the leg from the ribs, sprinkle a little salt and pepper, and squeeze on some lemon juice. It should be accompanied by asparagus, green peas, and lettuce.
Bone and skin your swan, and beat the flesh in a mortar, taking out the strings as you beat it; then take some clear fat bacon, and beat with the swan, and when 'tis of a light flesh colour, there is bacon enough in it; and when 'tis beaten till 'tis like dough, 'tis enough; then season it with pepper, salt, cloves, mace, and nutmeg, all beaten fine; mix it well with your flesh, and give it a beat or two all together; then put it in an earthen pot, with a little claret and fair water, and at the top two pounds of fresh butter spread over it; cover it with coarse paste, and bake it with bread; then turn it out into a dish, and squeeze it gently to get out the moisture; then put it in a pot fit for it; and when 'tis cold, cover it over with clarified butter, and next day paper it up. In this manner you may do goose, duck, or beef, or hare's flesh.
These are made of any scraps or bits of good food that happen to be left from one or more meals, and in such small quantities that they cannot be warmed up separately. As, for example, a couple of spoonfuls of frizzled beef and cream, the lean meat of one mutton chop, one spoonful of minced beef, two cold hard-boiled eggs, a little cold chopped potato, a little mashed potato, a chick's leg, all the gristle and hard outside taken from the meat. These things well chopped and seasoned, mixed with one raw egg, a little flour and butter, and boiling water; then made into round cakes, thick like fish-balls and browned well with butter in a frying pan or on a griddle. Scraps of hash, cold rice, boiled oatmeal left from breakfast, every kind of fresh meat, bits of salt tongue, bacon, pork or ham, bits of poultry, and crumbs of bread may be used. They should be put together with care, so as not to have them too dry to be palatable, or too moist to cook in shape. Most housekeepers would be surprised at the result, making an addition to the breakfast or lunch table. Serve on small squares of buttered toast, and with cold celery if in season.
Take part of a leg of pork or veal, pick it clean from the skin or fat, put to every pound of lean meat a pound of beef-suet, pick'd from the skins, shred the meat and suet separate and very fine, mix them well together, add a large handful of green sage shred very small; season it with pepper and salt, mix it well, press it down hard in an earthen pot, and keep it for use.--When you use them roll them up with as much egg as will make them roll smooth; in rolling them up make them about the length of your fingers, and as thick as two fingers; fry them in butter, which must be boiled before you can put them in, and keep them rolling about in the pan; when they are fried through they are enough.
Take a leg of young Pork, and cut of all the lean, and shred it very small, but leave none of the strings or skins amongst it, then take two pound of Beef Suet, and shred it small, then take two handfuls of red Sage, a little Pepper and Salt, and Nutmeg, and a small piece of an Onion, chop them altogether with the flesh and Suet; if it is small enough, put the yolk of two or three Eggs and mix altogether, and make it up in a Past if you will use it, roul out as many pieces as you please in the form of an ordinary Sausage, and so fry them, this Past will keep a fortnight upon occasion.
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 with it. The gravy is to be made the same way as for beef roast, by turning off all the superfluous fat and adding a spoonful of flour stirred with a little water; add water to make the right consistency. Serve in a gravy boat.
This dish comes from the French border of Belgium; it tastes better than you would think. Take a pound of beef sausages, and preferably use the small chipolata sausages. (What a delightful thing if the English would make other kinds of sausages as well as their beef and pork ones!) Fry then your sausages lightly in butter, look upon them as little beings for a few moments in purgatory before they are removed to heaven, among the apples. Keeping your sausages hot after they are fried, take a pound of brown pippin apples, pare them and core them. Cut them into neat rounds quarter of an inch thick, put them to cook in their liquor of the sausages (which you are keeping hot elsewhere), and add butter to moisten them. Let them simmer gently so as to keep their shape. Put the apple- rings in the center of the dish, place the sausages round them. This dish uses a good deal of butter, but you must not use anything else for frying.
