Page:The White House Cook Book.djvu/132

 112 MEATS.

it, 'with, another dish cover the top to kep them hot. The gravy in the pan can be turned over the steaks, first adding a few drops of boiling water, or a gravy to be served in a separate dish made by putting a large tablespoonf ul of flour into the hot gravy left in the pan after taking up the steaks. Stir it smooth, then pour in a pint of cream or sweet rich milk, salt and pepper, let it boil up once until it thickens, pour hot into a gravy dish and send to the table with the steaks.

POT ROAST. (Old Style.)

THIS is an old-fashioned dish, often cooked in our grandmothers 7 time. Take a piece of fresh beef weighing about five or six pounds. It must not be too fat. Wash it and put it into a pot with barely sufficient water to cover it. Set it over a slow fire, and after it has stewed an hour salt and pepper it. Then stew it slowly until tender, adding a little onion if liked. Do not replenish the water at the last, but let all nearly boil away. When tender all through take the meat from the pot and pour the gravy in a bowl. Put a large lump of butter in the bottom of the pot, then dredge the piece of meat with flour and return it to the pot to brown, turning it often to prevent its burning. Take the gravy that you have poured from the meat into the bowl and skim off all the fat ; pour this gravy in with the meat and stir in a large spoonful of flour wet with a little water ; let it boil up ten or fifteen minutes and pour into a gravy dish. Serve both hot, the meat on a platter. Some are very fond of this way of cooking a piece of beef which has been previously placed in spiced pickle for two

or three days.

SPICED BEEF. (Excellent.)

FOR a round of beef weighing twenty or twenty-four pounds, take one-quarter of a pound of saltpetre, one-quarter of a pound of coarse brown sugar, two pounds of salt, one ounce of cloves, one ounce of allspice and half an ounce of mace; pulverize these materials, mix them well together, and with them rub the beef thoroughly on every part ; let the beef lie for eight or ten days in the pickle thus made, turning and rubbing it every day; then tie it around with a broad tape, to keep it in shape ; make a coarse paste of flour and water, lay a little suet finely chopped over and under the beef, inclose the beef entirely in the paste, and bake it six hours. When you take the beef from the oven, remove the paste, but do not remove the tape until

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