Catherine Owen's new cook book ..

spoon ; then pour into the pan a little boiling water and salt, in quantity according to the quantity of sediment or glaze in the pan, and with a spoon rub off every speck of the dried gravy on the bottom and sides of the pan. Add no flour, the gravy must be thick enough with its own richness. If you have added too much water, so that it looks poor, you may always boil it down by set- ting the pan on the stove for a few minutes ; but it is better to put very little water at first, and add as the richness of the gravy allows. Now you have a rich brown gravy, instead of the thick whitey-brown broth so often served with roast meat. Every drop of this gravy and that from the dish should be carefully saved if left over. Save all dripping, except from mutton or meat with which onions are cooked, for purposes which I shall indicate in another place. Veal and pork require to be very thoroughly cooked. For them, therefore, the oven must not be too hot, nei- ther must it be lukewarm, a good even heat is best ; if likely to get too brown before it is thoroughly cooked, open the oven door. CHAPTEE IX. B0ILI2!^G. BoiLi:N'a is one of the things about which cooks are most careless ; theoretically they almost always know meat should be slowly boiled, but their idea of ^^slow '^ is ruled by the fire ; they neyer attempt to rule that. There is a good rule giyen by Gouffe as to what slow boiling actually is : the surface of the pot should only show signs of ebullition at one side^ just an occasional bubble. Simmering is a still slower process, and in this the pot should have only a sizzling round one part of the edge. All fresh meat should boil slowly ; ham or corn beef should barely simmer. Yet they must not go off the boil at all, which would spoil fresh meat entirely ; steep- ing in water gives a flat, insipid taste. AW. vegetables except potatoes, asparagus, peas, and cauliflower should boil as fast as possible ; these four only moderately. Most vegetables are boiled far too long. Cabbage is as delicate as cauliflower in the summer and fall if boiled in plenty of water, to which a salt spoon- ful of soda has been added, ^^fast as possible for twenty minutes or half an hour, then drained and dressed. In winter it should be cut in six or eight pieces, boiled /(^5^, in plenty of water, for half an hour, no longer. Always give it plenty of room, let the water boil rapidly when you put it in the pot, which set on the hottest part of 65 (>& Culture and Cooking. the fire to come to that point again^ and you will have no more strong, rank, yellow stuff on your table, no bad odor in your house. Peas require no more than twenty minutes' boiling if young ; asparagus the same ; the latter should always be boiled in a saucepan deep enough to let it stand up in the water when tied up in bunches, for this saves the heads. Potatoes should be poured off the minute they are done, and allowed to stand at the back of the stove with a clean cloth folded over them. They are the only vegetable that should be put into cold water. When new, boiling water is proper. When quite ripe they are more floury if put in cold water.