A text-book of cooking

with the flour ; add the salt and pepper. Try out the fat in a frying pan ; remove the scraps. Brown the onion and then the meat in the hot fat. Add the hot water and pieces of bone and cook in the frying pan for 2 hours at a low temperature ; or turn into a double boiler and cook for the same length of time. Add vegetables, except potatoes, and cook for 1 hour longer; add the potatoes £ hour before the stew is done. If desired, more flour, — mixed with enough cold water to pour easily, — may be added when the potatoes are added. Remove the bone, add kitchen bouquet, and serve. POT ROAST 3 pounds beef 6 peppercorns Flour Salt and pepper 2 thin slices salt pork or other fat J cupful each, — diced carrot, J bay leaf turnip, onion, and celery Try out the pork and remove the scraps. Dredge the meat generously with flour and brown the entire surface in the fat. Place the meat on a rack in the kettle; surround it with the vegetables and spices, and season it with salt and pepper. Add 3 cupfuls of boiling water; cover closely and simmer for 4 hours. Turn after the second hour. Strain the sauce, and pour it over the meat before serving. STUFFED SKIRT OR FLANK STEAK 1 skirt or flank steak 2 tablespoonfuls butter 2 cupfuls soft bread crumbs 2 teaspoonfuls sweet marjoram 2 tablespoonfuls chopped parsley 1 teaspoonf ul salt 4 dashes of pepper Mix the bread crumbs, parsley, and seasoning ; melt the butter ; add the seasoned bread crumbs to it. Spread over the steak. Eoll tightly and tie with twine. Sear in suet, butter, or other fat. Place the steak on the rack in a roasting pan, and put bits of fat over the top. Add £ cupful of hot water, cover, and bake in a quick oven for £ hour. Serve with Brown Sauce. (See Brown Sauce, p. 130.) Thickening the Sauce of Meat Cooked in Water. — When meat is dipped in flour, then browned in fat, and finally cooked in water, the flour thickens the water and forms a sauce around the meat. Usually, however, more flour needs to be added to the sauce to make it sufficiently thick. Sometimes directions for adding a flour-and-water paste to the hot meat stock are given, but unless the flour-and-water paste is cooked for some time (boiled for 5 minutes at least) the sauce does not have a pleasing flavor. This is because the starch is insufficiently cooked or the flour is not browned. It has been found much more satisfactory to sprinkle a Fig. 44.- 1 it-tie extra flour into the hot fat while browning the floured meat. Thus the sance is made smooth, and the starch cooked thoroughly by the time the sauce is ready to serve. Summary of the Methods of Cooking Tough Cuts of Heat. — There are many recipes for cooking meats. All of them, however, are modifications of a few methods. Moist heat must be applied to tough cuts of meat. (See Tough Cuts of Beef, p. 132.) The methods of cooking such cuts can be summed up as follows : 1. Soup Making : Soak meat, bone, and fat, in cold salted water, and then cook below boiling temperature in the water. 2. " Boiling " or Stewing : Plunge meat into boiling water ; boil until well seared ; then cook in water below the boiling temperature. 3. Pot-roasting and Braising: Sear meat by boiling or browning in fat, then cook in steam. If the cooking is done on the top of the range, it is called pot-roasting. If it is done in the Qvern, it is called braising. 1 . l ' , * ' If round steak has been cut too tljick for rolling, what is a practical way of making it of one half inch thickness ? For what purpose is rolled steak browned in fat before cooking in water? Explain why the rolled steak is cooked at simmering rather than at boiling temperature. What is the purpose of dredging these meats in flour ?