The Rural cook book

the oven and press with a heavy weight 12 hours — over ntght usually. Then remove the weight. There will be some fat, but not enough to cover it. Heat lard to the boiling point and pour over enough to cover. This seals— excludes the air. Keep in a cool place. Beef or pork may be kept in this way indefinitely. Oxford Sausage.— One pound each of finely chopped veal, pork and beef suet. Mix through this one quart of bread-crumbs, grated peel of half a lemon, a grated nutmeg, a sprig each of savory, thyme and sweet marjoram and a tablespoonful of powdered sage leaves. Make in cakes and fry in very little hot butter. Sausage, Pork and Beef.— For 10 pounds of sausage use seven and one-half pounds of pork and two and a half of beef; grind fine, add two tablespoonfuls of salt, one teaspoonful each of pepper, allspice, cloves and sage. Heat all together until so hot you cannot hold your finger in it. Turn into stone jars that have been thoroughly scalded and aired, cover with cheesecloth and pour hot suet over the cloth. When any is wanted for use, take out and make into cakes and fry. Summer Sausage. — Use any recipe you like best, but use cloih casings made from muslin, casings to have a diameter of three to four inches, and length to fit a baking pan. Casings are easily made with sewing machine. Smoke the finished sausage to your heart's content. After smoking let sausage dry sufficiently, which takes four or five weeks, depending on where hung to dry. The sausage should be fit for eating, which can readily be ascertained by cutting one through. When dry enough melt a quantity of paraffin — about one-half pound for a dozen sausages — put in baking pan, then place the sausages therein and roll about in the hot paraffin, one at a, time. Hang up in a dry place and they will keep nicely and indefinitely. Virginia Beef Sausage. — Mix two cupfuls of finely-chopped raw beef, I'/i cupful of fat salt pork minced very fine, two teaspoonfuls of powdered sage, a scant teaspoonfal of pepper — the pork should furnish sufficient salt — and one tablespoonful of lemon juice. When thoroughly mixed pack it in small round tin cans and set away to become hard. When wanted for breakfast slice three-fourths of an inch thick and either brown in the oven or fry in a hot, well-greased pan. Scrapple, Philadelphia— Take a cleaned pig's head and boil until the flesh strips easily from the bones. Remove all the bones and chop fine. Set the liquor in which the meat was boiled aside until cold, take the cake of fat from the surface and return the liquor to the fire. When it boils, put in the chopped meat and season well with pepper and salt. Let it boil again and thicken with cornmeal as you would in making ordinary cornmeal mush, by letting it slip slowly through the fingers to prevent lumps. Cook an hour, stirring constantly at first, afterward putting back on the range in a position to boil gently. When done, pour into a long, square pan, not too deep, and mold. In cold weather this cao be kept several weeks. Slice and fry brown in butter or dripping.