ounces of butter in small pieces over it, place it in a moderate oven, with a cover over the dish, and let it stew for an hour, then turn it out with its own gravy, and serve with parsley and butter. This is a rich and much esteemed dish.

Another dish which is particularly good baked is

Spiced Beef.

A piece of the buttock of beef, weighing fifteen or sixteen pounds, should be covered with a pound of salt, and turned every day for a week. It should be washed in cold water, well rubbed with two ounces of black pepper and a quarter of an ounce of mace, bound tight or skewered, and placed in a stone covered stewingpan with two or three sliced onions fried and three or four cloves, covered with water, and baked for five hours. It should then be allowed to grow cold, and will be a very nice breakfast or supper dish, being as tender as potted meat. The liquor in which it has been stewed, when the fat is removed, makes excellent stock for soup.

To Bake a Ham.

A moderate-sized ham, if not too old, is much better and richer baked than boiled. It should be soaked first in cold and then in lukewarm water for five or six hours, trimmed neatly, and quite inclosed in a coarse meal paste. Then placed on a baking-tin in a well-heated oven, and baked from five to six hours, according to size. The paste and skin must be removed while the ham is hot, it will then be found full of gravy and of excellent flavour.

When the poorer classes bake their meat at a public oven for convenience, it is generally placed on a stand, and potatoes or a batter-pudding baked beneath it.

The most simple, natural, and certainly, when well done, the most wholesome method of preparing meat is by broiling. Several kinds of fish, especially mackerel and whiting, are only eaten in perfection when broiled.

But no operation of cookery requires more delicate attention; the first consideration is the fire, which should not be too hot, or the meat is scorched and blackened outside, yet it should be brisk and clear to give the meat that browning which is the perfection of this mode of cookery; and to prevent the gravy from escaping, which it must do over a slow, dull fire.

The gridiron should be quite clean between the bars; it must be first heated over the fire, then wiped with a linen cloth, and the bars rubbed with butter or fresh mutton-suet, to prevent the meat being marked. It must be sloping towards the back of the fire that the fat may run down, and not drop into the fire to occasion a blaze, which would smoke the meat.

Chops or steaks should be from half to three-quarters of an inch in thickness; if they are thicker, the outside will be done before the inside can be properly cooked. Mutton chops or beefsteaks may be well done or underdone according to taste; but lamb or pork chops, and every kind of fish, should be thoroughly done, or they are uneatable.

No salt or any kind of seasoning should be thrown on a chop until after it is cooked.

Steaks or chops must be continually turned while broiling, to preserve the gravy; and the dish on which they are served must be perfectly hot, or the cookery is spoiled.

Hashes.

A hash is a very convenient mode of disposing of cold meat, but without due attention is an indigestible pre

paration. The cook must always remember that the meat has been once cooked, and must now be very lightly done, or it will be tough and hard, unsuited for delicate stomachs. Meat that has been a little underdone the first time is the best for the purpose; the gravy should be first heated, and the meat only simmered in it afterwards. The meat should be cut in thin slices, then all the sinews, skin, gristle, and bone must be put into a saucepan with a pint of broth or water, a little salt and pepper, a fried onion, a small piece of butter blended with a table-spoonful of flour, a little thyme and parsley, and a single clove, if the hash be beef. Let it boil down to three-fourths of the quantity, then strain off the gravy, and flavour it with a little ketchup or Worcester sauce, put in the sliced meat, and make it hot over the fire, taking great care that it does not boil, and serve it with sippets of toasted bread.

No flavour or condiment should unduly predominate in this or any other kind of cookery; especially, to allow onions or garlic to be perceptible is an offence against good taste, the laws of cookery, and even those of health. The mushroom flavour is the most approved and delicate in what are called made dishes, yet it should always be so skilfully used, that only the aroma should be distinguished. This should be particularly attended to in all dishes composed of veal or fowls. The most common and useful dish of this sort is

Minced Veal.

This is one of the most agreeable, simple, inexpensive, and wholesome of made dishes. The meat from any joint of veal is available, and every part may be used; some people not even objecting to a little fat. It must all be cut away from the bones and nicely minced; the brown, outside, the gristles, and the bones broken up must be boiled into gravy with a little salt, a few white

pepper-corns, and a blade of mace, then strained off, and with the minced meat put into a stewpan, with a teaspoonful of grated lemon-peel, the same quantity of lemonjuice, a flavour of Cayenne pepper, a table-spoonful of cream, and a piece of butter blended with flour; as soon as perfectly hot through, the mince should be poured out upon a dish lined with sippets of toast.

Vegetables.

Green vegetables, when eaten in the spring and in moderation, are, if well cooked, highly conducive to sound health. All green vegetables should be used when perfectly fresh, and be cooked in boiling water, which must continue boiling till they are perfectly tender, but not longer, or the flavour and nutriment will be imbibed by the water.

Jerusalem artichokes and potatoes are, however, put into cold water.

On the important subject of boiling potatoes alone a whole book might be written. It is the grand failure of cookery, and in small establishments especially, half the servants who pretend to be cooks, neglect, despise, or misunderstand this useful art.

To Boil Potatoes.

Potatoes should be selected of tolerably equal size, well washed, but not pared. Put them into a pan covered with cold water, into which a little salt has been thrown, and cover with the lid. When half done, pour off the water, and substitute clean boiling water; try the pota toes with a fork, and if it passes through freely, check the boiling with a cup of cold water; but as soon as they crack, pour off the water, uncover the pan, set it on the hob a few minutes till the moisture evaporates, then cover with a clean napkin till ready to serve.

If boiled in a steamer, the potatoes must be, on the contrary, not put on till the water boils, then treated in the same manner as above.

They should be sent to table covered only with a napkin, or if in a covered dish, it should have a pierced cover to allow the steam to escape, or the potatoes will be heavy and unwholesome.

The Irish mode of sending them to table in the skins is decidedly the most sensible, as the flavour cannot be preserved long after the potato is peeled.

Potatoes require a little more boiling when intended to be mashed; they should always be nicely beaten with a wooden spatula or spoon, and have no mixture but a little milk or cream warmed, with a small piece of butter. When perfectly smooth, they should be put into a Dutch oven to brown, or into a buttered mould, into which a few bread-crumbs have been spread, and then browned in a common oven, and turned out.

As we have no food so cheap, so easily prepared, and so universally liked as the potato, it ought to be a particular duty for servants and mistresses to understand how to dress it to be wholesome and nutritious. Even cold potatoes, when cut in slices and fried in plenty of butter or dripping, drained entirely from the fat, and sprinkled with a little salt, are an excellent dish.

Of green vegetables, peas are the most delicate when young and well boiled. It is a good plan to cover them when boiling with a layer of the pods, by which means the flavour is considerably preserved.

When vegetables are old and tough, they may be rendered digestible by being pulped or pressed through a cullender; the fibres, or stringy parts, are thus either left out, or rendered easy of digestion.

Carrots, which are by no means wholesome when served boiled in dice or slices, are nutritious and perfectly digestible when pulped or mashed like turnips, either for soup, to be eaten with the meat, or served with rice, which makes an excellent dish.