Soyer's standard cookery

Rub four ounces of lard or good dripping into half a pound of flour salted to taste till it crumbles well. Add sufficient cold water to make to a stiff paste; roll out twice. Mark out a square and spread this thickly with any kind of jam liked. Fold over the two sides first and pinch well together. Now fold over the two sides in the same way. Brush over with water or milk, and sprinkle well with brown sugar. Put into the greased bag and bake for forty-five minutes. Tuesday. For this day try a new way of doing sausages. Take two pounds of cold boiled potatoes, pour on to them two wineglass fuls of hot milk or water, add a good big lump of dripping or cold bacon fat, and mash to a pulp, then beat up with a fork till quite light. Take one and a half pounds of either sausages or sausage meat (if the former, squeeze the meat out of the skins), and make into small cakes, each sausage making two cakes. Sprinkle a little finely-chopped onion on top of each cake. Make the potato pulp into thick round cakes, and put a sausage cake on top of each. Place in a well-greased bag. Close it, and cook in a hot oven for fifteen minutes. This is a splendid way of using up cold potatoes, and a very quick emergency dinner for a washing day. Old-fashioned Irish plum porridge. Soak half a pound of oatmeal over-night in cold water. At the same time soak four ounces of well-washed currants in another dish. Grease a bag well, drain the currants, add them to the oatmeal together with a bit of butter the size of a walnut. Mix, place in the bag, close, and cook for fifty minutes in a moderately hot oven. Serve with sifted sugar and, if possible, a little cream. Wednesday. Let the dinner be roast and stuffed breast of mutton. Take a lean breast of mutton four pounds weight, getting the butcher to bone it for you. Make a stuffing with two ounces of stale breadcrumbs, a dust of salt and pepper, a finely-chopped onion, and a heaped puddingspoonful of minced parsley, or, if pressed for time, a little finely-powdered mixed sweet herbs. Add a good lump of dripping, or cut a little fat from the thick part of the breast, chop this finely, and use instead of dripping. Bind if possible with an egg, or, failing this, use a little cold milk. Lay this mixture on the inside of the meat. Roll as tightly as possible, tie into place with clean tape or string. Grease the bag well. Put in one pound of peeled and halved potatoes, choosing these all as nearly of a size as possible. Then put in the meat. Add the other and put in the rest of the potatoes. Put in bag in a very hot oven. Lower the gas half-way (or push in the dampers), and cook for an hour and a quarter, or an hour and a half, according as the meat is liked — well, over or underdone. Turn out, serve with a little red currant jam, if jelly is not possible. Baked bread pudding will be found very acceptable after this.