Page:Australian enquiry book of household and general information.djvu/15

Rh boiling water, place it at once over the fire and stir till it boils and thickens a little (be sure you do not put too much flour); the gravy should be a rich brown colour and just a little thickened. Pour it through a strainer into a gravy tureen and send to table, or, if preferred, pour into the dish with the joint.

One thing to be impressed upon all cooks is to send the meal in hot, not half cold, the fault lies in the dishing up generally, the joint gets cold while the gravy is making, perhaps stands uncovered on the table while the rest of the meal is being dished and the plates heated. If you have no dish cover, stand the meat in the oven or before the fire while the gravy is making. If there are sauces to be made, such as onion, bread or mint, they must be ready-made to dish with the meat, and the young cook should get to know all about such things and make them without orders if the mistress, who will most likely be her mother, forgets. Bread sauce goes with turkey and also roast fowl very often; mint sauce goes with lamb, apple sauce with roast goose, pork, etc.; onion sauce goes with many things, rabbit, bandicoot, etc.. boiled; currant jelly is eaten with roast mutton by many people; the great thing is to know and serve these things at the right time.

There are recipes for all the sauces given elsewhere.

A leg of mutton is often stuffed with thyme, onion, bread crumbs, well-mixed with one egg and a teaspoonful of dripping. The place to stuff it is under the flap. Another and better way is to remove the bone (the butcher will do it) by slipping the knife along. Do not cut the leg open. Fill the space with stuffing, which may be made by mixing together bread-crumbs, chopped parsley, small piece of butter, and a little pepper and salt.

In preparing poultry, do not attempt to draw or wash them till all the feathers are off and they have been singed, as, if washed beforehand, the flesh becomes blackened and dirty and the hairs will not burn off. Game that has been shot in the bush or swamps and carried some distance, has to be cleaned to prevent it going bad, and the plucking has to be done after. But with the poultry killed at home it is different. The best way of killing, I consider, is by bleeding, cutting the head right off is the simplest way, and the best so long as it is not cut too near the body, and so the breast spoilt for stuffing.

Be sure to take the crop or craw out whole, it is very easily done if you are careful, but do not extract the crop till the bird is drawn, because, the gizzard being attached to the crop, you might have difficulty.

Open a fowl in the left side, making the slit inside the leg, or in what might might be called the groin, so that with your right hand you can remove all the inside, it is a mistake to use a knife to cut away or scrape anything out; all that it is necessary to