Miss Parloa's kitchen companion

Remove the bone from the remainder of a roast leg of mutton. Season the meat well with salt and pepper, and place it on a tin plate or sheet in a baking-pan. Cut an onion in halves, and rub it over the meat. Pare, boil, and mash ten good-sized potatoes, and season with a table-spoonful of butter, a scant table -spoonful of salt, half a teaspoonful of pepper, and half a cupful of hot milk. Fill with potato the space left vacant by the removal of the bone, and heap the remainder of the potato upon the meat. Pour around the mutton a sauce made as follows : — Put three table-spoonfuls of butter into a frying-pan, and when it is hot, add two large table-spoonfuls of flour. Stir the sauce until it becomes dark brown ; then add, very slowly, a pint of stock made with the bones from the mutton, and season with salt and pepper. Boil for two minutes. This sauce will be thin, but it will thicken as it is cooked. When the sauce has been poured around the meat, place the baking-pan in a moderately hot oven. Cook the meat for an hour, basting it, and the potato too, every fifteen minutes with the sauce. At the end of the hour beat two eggs rather light, and spread over the meat and potato. Ten minutes later remove the pan from the oven. Place the meat on a warm platter, and pour the sauce around it. Garnish with parsley, and serve very hot. Veal or lamb may be served in the same manner. * Broiled Breast of Mutton. For a family of six or seven, get two breasts of mutton. Cut out the backbones, — which may be used in making stock, — and season the meat well with salt and pepper, and dredge it lightly with flour. Broil over a clear fire for fifteen minutes, and serve on a warm dish with Soubise sauce. * Ragout of Mutton. For six persons use three pounds of the shoulder of mutton, a carrot, a turnip, two table-spoonfuls of chopped onion, one quart of potatoes, measured after being pared, and cut into half-inch cubes, three table-spoonfuls of flour, three of butter, three pints of boiling water, and enough salt and pepper to season the dish well. Cut most of the fat from the meat, and then cut the meat into small pieces. Season, and roll in flour. After putting the butter into a frying-pan, put in also all the vegetables, except the potatoes, cut fine. Cook slowly for five minutes, and then add the meat. Stir the contents of the pan over a hot fire until they acquire a golden-brown color ; then turn into a large stew-pan, and pour the boiling water over them, reserving a little, however, with which to wash off any part of the mixture which may cling to the frying-pan. Cook gently for an hour and a half. At the end of that time season well with salt and pepper, and add the potatoes. With half an hour's further cooking the dish will be finished. * Irish Stew. For this stew use two pounds of the shoulder of mutton, a pint and a half of peeled and sliced onion, three pints of pared and sliced potatoes, one table-spoonful of flour, three generous teaspoonfuls of salt, one teaspoonful of pepper, one quart of boiling water, and one tablespoonful of minced parsley.