The art of cookery

brown in the oven. If to be eaten warm, take from the vessel in which it was cooked as soon as sufficiently tender, remove the skin, lay on a platter, and serve. To Boil Corned Beef. — If the beef is too salt soak in cold water until sufficiently freshened, then put to cook in boiling water enough to just cover it and cook until very tender. Cabbage, cauliflower, turnips, spinach, beans, or carrots can be appropriately served with corned beef To Boil Spiced Beef. — Select the rump, round, or flank, and if very lean lard with salt pork, or beef suet. Put in a kettle with a medium-sized onion, carrot, and turnip, two or three sprigs of parsley, some trimmings of celery, six cloves, six pepper corns, and a tablespoonful of salt. Cover with boiling water and cook very gently from four to six hours, according to the age and condition of the meat. When the meat is perfectly cooked lift it on to a platter, strain the broth, remove the grease from it, thicken with butter and flour cooked together until brown (see Brown Sauce No. i), and serve the sauce with the meat. To Boil an Egg. — Pour a pint of boiling water into a small sauce-pan or other vessel, put the egg in it, cover closely, place it where it will keep hot, and let stand for about six minutes. An egg so cooked will be evenly done all through without being hard, semi-raw, or slimy, and will be tender, delicate, and delicious. To cook eggs properly in this manner a pint of water should be allowed for each egg. And if many eggs are to be cooked at one time the inconvenience of using a large quantity of water can be avoided by pouring boiling Boiling. 71 water upon the eggs, letting it stand a minute, then pouring it off and replacing with more boiling water. To hard-boil an egg put it in a pint of boiling water and let it remain there twenty minutes. This will render the yolk dry and mealy. Or put the egg in cold water, bring the water to the boiling point, and let the egg remain in it for fifteen minutes. To Boil Vegetables. — The general rule in regard to vegetables is : Put them to cook in slightly salted boiling water and keep them simmering until done. To Boil Potatoes. — Boiling is the most common method of cooking potatoes, yet comparatively few people know how to boil a potato so that it will be dry, mealy, and fine-flavored. To boil either pared or unpared potatoes, put them in a liberal allowance of slightly salted boiling water, and keep them cooking gently until tender enough to be pierced easily with a fork, then drain off the water, sprinkle a little salt over the potatoes, cover them with a towel or napkin, and set the kettle containing them back on the range where they will dry off and keep warm. A medium-sized potato will boil in twenty-five minutes. Some prefer to have potatoes pared before they are put to cook, others prefer to have them boiled in their skins and the skins removed before the potatoes are sent to table, while others again prefer to have them boiled and served in their skins. But as there is no positive evidence that they are more nutritious or digestible when cooked pared, than they are when cooked unpared, it may be safely left to individual taste or fancy to determine whether potatoes shall be boiled with or without their skins. 72 The Art of Cookery.