Mrs. Roundell's Practical cookery book

Baked Beans and Pork.— Put a knuckle of Pork and a little salt into an earthenware jar which holds five quarts. Then fill it half full with shelled Broad Beans and add cold water up to the brim. Put on the lid of the jar, which must have a hole in it to allow the steam to escape. Set the jar in the oven, and let it remain there twelve hours. The beans and meat will be perfectly cooked by that time in rich gravy. The gravy will form a jelly when cold. TRIPE Tripe. — “ At the top a fried Liver and Bacon was seen, At the bottom was Tripe in a swinging tureen.” Oliver Goldsmith, who hated Liver and said that Tripe was his “ utter aversion,” thus described the dinner at which his own haunch of venison was to have appeared, made into a pasty. His friend’s wife, “little Kitty, so famous for crust,” had indeed made the pasty, but the baker had forgotten to put it in the oven, and the poor poet got no dinner. Liver and Bacon is now hardly ever seen, and Tripe is never seen, on the tables of well-regulated families. But were a fashionable doctor to order Tripe (really a light and nutritious food), his patients and their friends would as usual follow each other like sheep, and would declare that Tripe was the only meat they could touch. In view of this contingency I will explain how Tripe should be cooked. Tripe is part of the stomach of a pig, and tripe-dressers are persons who prepare it for cooking. It can be cooked in either milk or broth. For the former method order two pounds of what is called “double Tripe.” Blanch it by putting it into cold water and bringing it to the boil. Blanch three onions also. Cut the tripe into neat pieces, divide the onions in half, and put both into two pints and a half of milk, seasoning it with pepper and salt. Stew the Tripe and Onions gently for an hour to an hour and half. Take out the onions and chop them, lay the Tripe on a hot dish, thicken the milk with a couple of ounces of flour, boil it up, add the onions, and pour it over the Tripe. Serve very hot, in “ a swinging tureen,” that is, a dish with a lamp under it. Half milk and half water can be used. Or broth can be substituted for the milk. Liver and Bacon. — Cut a pound of fat bacon into slices, and fry them slowly in a frying-pan. Cut a sheep’s liver in slices, flour them, take the bacon out of the pan, and fry the liver in the bacon fat. Put the liver on a hot dish, and the bacon round it. Fry an ounce of flour brown, add a pint of boiling water, stir well, add pepper and salt, and boil the gravy for a couple of minutes ; then pour it over the meat. Or a calf’s liver, which is considered more delicate, can be used. Cut the slices in the shape of cutlets, and fry them with the bacon, adding pepper, Q salt, and chopped parsley. Arrange the liver and bacon in alternate slices on a hot dish, put the flour in the frying-pan with a minced shallot and a squeeze of lemon juice, let this warm up and pour it through a strainer into the hot dish in the centre of the liver and bacon. Liver must be used quite fresh, or it will be dry and leathery. If it is fried too much the flavour will be lost.