Thoroughly wash the muscles, and pull off any weeds there may be hanging to them; next put them in a clean saucepan with a little water, and salt enough to season, and set them on the fire to boil, tossing them occasionally, until you find that their shells begin to open; they must then be taken off the fire, and their liquor poured off into a basin. Next, after removing one of the shells from each muscle, put them back into the saucepan; add the liquor, a bit of butter, a spoonful of flour, some pepper, chopped parsley, and a little drop of vinegar, toss the whole over the fire until the muscles have boiled five minutes, and then you will enjoy a treat for supper. Cockles and whelks are cooked in the same way.
[No. 56. Baked Beef and Potatoes.]
The cheapest pieces of beef, suitable for baking or roasting, consist of the thick part of the ribs, cut from towards the shoulder, the mouse buttock and gravy pieces, and also what is commonly called the chuck of beef, which consists of the throat boned and tied up with string in the form of a small round. Whichever piece of beef you may happen to buy, it should be well sprinkled over with pepper, salt, and flour, and placed upon a small iron trivet in a baking dish containing peeled potatoes and about half-a-pint of water, and either baked in your own oven or else sent to the baker's. If you bake your meat in your own oven, remember that it must be turned over on the trivet every twenty minutes, and that you must be careful to baste it all over now and then with the fat which runs from it into the dish, using a spoon for that purpose. It would be very economical if, when you have baked meat for dinner, you were always to make a Yorkshire pudding to be baked under it. There are baking dishes made with a parting down the middle which just suit this purpose. In this case the potatoes are put in one part and the pudding in the other part.
[No. 57. Yorkshire Pudding.]
To one pound of flour add three pints of skim milk, two eggs, nutmeg and salt; mix smoothly, and pour the pudding into the greased dish, and bake it under the meat, as recommended above.
[No. 58. Baked Suet Pudding.]
To one pound of flour add six ounces of chopped suet, three pints of skim milk, nutmeg and salt; mix thoroughly and smoothly, and bake the pudding in the dish under the meat.
[No. 59. Toad in the Hole.]
To make this a cheap dinner, you should buy 6d. or 1s. worth of bits or pieces of any kind of meat, which are to be had cheapest at night when the day's sale is over. The pieces of meat should be first carefully overlooked, to ascertain if there be any necessity to pare away some tainted part, or perhaps a fly-blow, as this, if left on any one piece of meat, would tend to impart a bad taste to the whole, and spoil the dish. You then rub a little flour, pepper, and salt all over the meat, and fry it brown with a little butter or fat in the frying-pan; when done, put it with the fat in which it has been fried into a baking-dish containing some Yorkshire or suet pudding batter, made as directed at Nos. [57] and [58], and bake the toad-in-the-hole for about an hour and a half, or else send it to the baker's.