The housekeeper's companion

The vegetables most proper with roast beef are plain boiled or mashed potatoes, with boiled spinach, beets or dressed celery, and turnips mashed, or squash. If you please, pickles, or grated horseradish, may also be served with roast beef instead of spinach or celery, with made mustard and catsup in the castor. In roasting meat it should be so placed as to bring the largest or thickest part nearest the fire. In roasting meat its juiciness depends on the frequency of basting it, after it has fairly begun to roast. Veal. — Veal should not be kept long before dressing, as it by no means improves by keeping. The loin is apt to taint under the kidney. When soft and slimy it is stale; it will be cool and firm and have an agreeable smell when fresh. In the shoulder, if the vein is a clear red, it is good. When there are any yellow or dark spots it is stale. The breast and neck, when good, look white and clear. Veal must always be well cooked. The leg of veal is generally boiled or made soup of. The loin also may be boiled, but it is best roasted, and cut into chops and broiled and fried. The shoulder may be roasted; it may be boned and stuffed and then roasted, or it may be split, after having been boned, and fried or broiled. The breast may be roasted, stewed, or broiled, or made a pie. Steaks are cut from leg or shoulder. The neck, or scrag, may be cut in chops and fried, broiled, or stewed; or a dish of soup may be made of it. Calf's liver is cut in steaks, and fried like beef liver, or it may be broiled and buttered. Veal sweet-breads are roasted with the breast, or they may be fried or stewed. Calf's head may be boiled and served with a sauce, and a soup made of the liquor in which it is boiled. The head and feet are used for making jellies. To Broil Veal. — Put in hot water (not boiling) to cover it, put to it a teaspoonful of salt, cover the pot, and let it boil very gently, taking off the scum as it rises; allow fifteen minutes for each pound of meat; four pounds of meat will require one hour gentle boiling. Serve boiled veal with drawn butter, or oysters, or lemon, or parsley sauce, and plain boiled potatoes with pickles, or lettuce, or celery. Boil the loin and serve with egg sauce. Calf's Head. — Clean it very nicely and soak it in salt and water, that it may look white (clean as directed for beef tripe), take out the eyes, take out the tongue to salt, and the brains to make a little dish; boil the head very tender, and serve with a sauce, or take it up, put bits of butter all over it, dredge with flour, and season with pepper and finely sifted sweet herbs, if liked, set it in a hot oven or before the fire; baste with some of the water in which it was boiled, or squeeze the juice of a lemon over; roast it a fine brown; then take it on a hot dish and put on a tin cover; add a piece of butter, the size of an egg, to the gravy; cut a small lemon in thin slices, and make the gravy boiling hot; add them to it; let them fry brown, then put a teaspoonful of browned flour, and a teacup of boiling water to the gravy, and serve with the meat. The lemon may be dispensed with if preferred — it will generally be liked.