The shoulder and breast of veal are best for roasting. Always buy veal that is fat and white. Prepare for the oven in the following manner: Wash and then dry; rub it well with salt, a very little ground ginger, and dredge it well with flour. Lay in roasting-pan and put slices of onion on top with a few tablespoons of goose-fat or drippings. Cover tightly and roast, allowing twenty minutes to the pound and baste frequently. Veal must be well done. When cold it slices up as nicely as turkey.
With roast beef: tomato sauce, grated horse-radish, mustard, cranberry sauce, pickles. With roast pork: apple sauce, cranberry sauce. With roast veal: tomato sauce, mushroom sauce, onion sauce and cranberry sauce. Horse-radish and lemons are good. With roast mutton: currant jelly, caper sauce. With boiled mutton: onion sauce, caper sauce. With boiled fowls: bread sauce, onion sauce, lemon sauce, cranberry sauce, jellies. Also cream sauce. With roast lamb: mint sauce. With roast turkey: cranberry sauce, currant jelly. With boiled turkey: oyster sauce. With venison or wild ducks: cranberry sauce, currant jelly, or currant jelly warmed with port wine. With roast goose: apple sauce, cranberry sauce, grape or currant jelly. With boiled fresh mackerel: stewed gooseberries. With boiled blue fish: white cream sauce, lemon sauce. With broiled shad: mushroom sauce, parsley or egg sauce. With fresh salmon: green peas, cream sauce. Pickles are good with all roast meats, and in fact are suitable accompaniments to all kinds of meats in general. Spinach is the proper accompaniment to veal; green peas to lamb. Lemon juice makes a very grateful addition to nearly all the insipid members of the fish kingdom. Slices of lemon cut into very small dice and stirred into drawn butter and allowed to come to the boiling point, served with fowls, is a fine accompaniment.
Stuff the goose with a potato dressing made in the following manner: Six potatoes, boiled, pared and mashed fine and light; one table- spoonful of salt, one teaspoonful of pepper, one spoonful of sage, two table-spoonfuls of onion juice, two of butter. Truss, and dredge well with salt, pepper and flour. Roast before the fire (if weighing eight pounds) one hour and a half; in the oven, one hour and a quarter. Make gravy the same as for turkey. No butter is required for goose, it is so fat. Serve with apple sauce. Many people boil the goose half an hour before roasting, to take away the strong flavor. Why not have something else if you do not like the real flavor of the goose?
Begin your preparations by making the stuffing. Take a sufficient quantity of grated stale bread, and mix it with sage and sweet marjoram rubbed fine or powdered; also some grated lemon-peel. Season it with pepper, salt, powdered nutmeg and mace; mix in butter enough to moisten it, and some beaten yolk of egg to bind it. Let the whole be very well incorporated. The pig should be newly killed, (that morning if possible,) nicely cleaned, fat, and not too large. Wash it well in cold water, and cut off the feet close to the joints, leaving some skin all round to fold over the ends. Take out the liver and heart, and reserve them, with the feet, to make the gravy. Truss back the legs. Fill the body with the stuffing (it must be quite full) and then sew it up, or tie it round with a buttered twine. Put the pig on the spit, and place it before a clear brisk fire, but not too near lest it scorch. The fire should be largest at the ends, that the middle of the pig may not be done before the extremities. If you find the heat too great in the centre, you may diminish it by placing a flat-iron before the fire. When you first put it down, wash the pig all over with salt and water; afterwards rub it frequently with a feather dipped in sweet oil, or with fresh butter tied in a rag. If you baste it with any thing else, or with its own dripping, the skin will not be crisp. Take care not to blister or burn the outside by keeping it too near the fire. A good sized pig will require at least three hours' roasting. Unless a pig is very small it is seldom sent to table whole. Take the spit from the fire, and place it across a large dish: then, having cut off the head with a sharp knife, and cut down the back, slip the spit out. Lay the two halves of the body close together in the dish, and place half the head on each side. Garnish with sliced lemon. For the gravy,--take, that from the dripping-pan and skim it well. Having boiled the heart, liver, and feet, with some minced sage in a very little water, cut the meat from the feet, and chop it. Chop also the liver and heart. Put all into a small sauce-pan, adding a little of the water that they were boiled in, and some bits of butter rolled in flour. Flavour it with a glass of Madeira, and some grated nutmeg. Give it a boil up, and send it to table in a gravy-boat. You may serve up with the pig, apple-sauce, cranberry sauce, or bread-sauce in a small tureen; or currant jelly. If you bake the pig instead of roasting it, rub it from time to time with fresh butter tied in a rag.
Pick and draw them, wash out well in two or three waters, adding a little soda to the last but one to sweeten it, if there is doubt as to its being fresh. Dry it well with a clean cloth, and fill the crop and body with a stuffing the same as "Dressing for Fowls." Lay it in a dripping-pan; put a pint of hot water and a piece of butter in the dripping-pan, add to it a small tablespoonful of salt, and a small teaspoonful of pepper; baste frequently, and let it roast quickly, without scorching; when nearly done, put a piece of butter the size of a large egg to the water in the pan; when it melts, baste with it, dredge a little flour over, baste again, and let it finish; half an hour will roast a full grown chicken, if the fire is right. When done, take it up. Having stewed the necks, gizzards, livers and hearts in a very little water, strain it and mix it hot with the gravy that has dripped from the fowls, and which must be first skimmed. Thicken it with a little browned flour, add to it the livers, hearts and gizzards chopped small. Or, put the giblets in the pan with the chicken and let them roast. Send the fowls to the table with the gravy in a boat. Cranberry sauce should accompany them, or any tart sauce.
When you wish to serve apple sauce with meat prepare it in this way: Cook the apples until they are very tender, then stir them thoroughly so there will be no lumps at all; add the sugar and a little gelatine dissolved in warm water, a tablespoonful in a pint of sauce; pour the sauce into bowls, and when cold it will be stiff like jelly, and can be turned out on a plate. Cranberry sauce can be treated in the same way. Many prefer this to plain stewing. Apples cooked in the following way look very pretty on a tea-table, and are appreciated by the palate. Select firm, round greenings; pare neatly and cut in halves; place in a shallow stewpan with sufficient boiling water to cover them, and a cupful of sugar to every six apples. Each half should cook on the bottom of the pan, and be removed from the others so as not to injure its shape. Stew slowly until the pieces are very tender; remove to a dish carefully; boil the syrup half an hour longer; pour it over the apples and eat cold. A few pieces of lemon boiled in the syrup adds to the flavor. These sauces are a fine accompaniment to roast pork or roast goose.
Take a turkey, dress and truss it, then take down the breast-bone. To make Stuffing for the Breast. Take beef-suet, the liver shred fine, and bread-crumbs, a little lemon-peel, nutmeg, pepper and salt to your taste, a little shred parsley, a spoonful or two of cream, and two eggs. Put her on a spit and roast her before a slow fire; you may lard your turkey with fat bacon; if the turkey be young, an hour and a quarter will roast it. For the sauce, take a little white gravy, an onion, a few bread-crumbs, and a little whole pepper, let them boil well together, put to them a little flour and a lump of butter, which pour upon the turkey; you may lay round your turkey forc'd-meat-balls. Garnish your dish with slices of lemon.
Draw and pick four pigeons immediately after they are killed, and let them be cooked soon, as they do not keep well. Wash the inside very clean, and wipe it dry. Stuff them with a mixture of parsley parboiled and chopped, grated bread-crumbs, and butter; seasoned with pepper, salt, and nutmeg. Dredge them with flour, and roast them before a good fire, basting them with butter. They will be done in about twenty-five or thirty minutes. Serve them up with parsley-sauce. Lay the pigeons on the dish in a row. If asparagus is in season, it will be much better than parsley both for the stuffing and sauce. It must first be boiled. Chop the green heads for the stuffing, and cut them in two for the melted butter. Have cranberry-sauce on the table. Pigeons may be split and broiled, like chickens; also stewed or fricasseed. They are very good stewed with slices of cold ham and green peas, serving up all in the same dish.
Take a large turkey and truss it; take down the breast-bone, and stuff it in the breast with some stuffing, as you did the roast turkey, lard it with bacon, then rub the skin of the turkey with the yolk of an egg, and strow over it a little nutmeg, pepper, salt, and a few bread-crumbs, then put it into a copper-dish and fend it to the oven; when you dish it up make for the turkey brown gravy-sauce; shred into your sauce a few oysters and mushrooms; lay round artichoke-bottoms fry'd, stew'd pallets, forc'd-meat-balls, and a little crisp bacon. Garnish your dish with pickled mushrooms, and slices of lemon. This is a proper dish for a remove.
Make a force-meat of grated bread-crumbs, minced suet, sweet marjoram, grated lemon-peel, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and beaten yolk of egg. You may add some grated cold ham. Light some writing paper, and singe the hairs from the skin of the turkey. Reserve the neck, liver, and gizzard for the gravy. Stuff the craw of the turkey with the force-meat, of which there should be enough made to form into balls for frying, laying them round the turkey when it is dished. Dredge it with flour, and roast it before a clear brisk fire, basting it with cold lard. Towards the last, set the turkey nearer to the fire, dredge it again very lightly with flour, and baste it with butter. It will require, according to its size, from two to three hours roasting. Make the gravy of the giblets cut in pieces, seasoned, and stewed for two hours in a very little water; thicken it with a spoonful of browned flour, and stir into it the gravy from the dripping-pan, having first skimmed off the fat. A turkey should be accompanied by ham or tongue. Serve up with it mushroom-sauce. Have stewed cranberries on the table to eat with it. Do not help any one to the legs, or drum-sticks as they are called. Turkeys are sometimes stuffed entirely with sausage-meat. Small cakes of this meat should then be fried, and laid round it. To bone a turkey, you must begin with a very sharp knife at the top of the wings, and scrape the flesh loose from the bone without dividing or cutting it to pieces. If done carefully and dexterously, the whole mass of flesh may be separated from the bone, so that you can take hold of the head and draw out the entire skeleton at once. A large quantity of force-meat having been prepared, stuff it hard into the turkey, restoring it by doing so to its natural form, filling out the body, breast, wings and legs, so as to resemble their original shape when the bones were in. Roast or bake it; pouring a glass of port wine into the gravy. A boned turkey is frequently served up cold, covered with lumps of currant jelly; slices of which are laid round the dish. Any sort of poultry or game may be boned and stuffed in the same manner, A cold turkey that has not been boned is sometimes sent to table larded all over the breast with slips of fat bacon, drawn through the flesh with a larding needle, and arranged in regular form.
