CHAPTER III.
HOW TO COOK MEAT.
PUTTING THE JOINT INTO THE BAG.
This sketch shows how joints must be placed in the paper bag. The bag should rest on the table; lift the uppermost edge, and your food or joint can be slipped in.
Paper-bag cookery should appeal especially to the caterer for a small family. The difficulty of providing suitable joints for households of three or four persons is very great. A small piece of sirloin or half leg of mutton dries up to nothing when cooked in the ordinary way, and loud are the complaints that the flavour and juiciness of a large joint is not to be had under ten to twelve pounds of meat. Yet, if the housewife invests in the large, juicy joint desired, she finds it a very expensive business. One day's dinner hot and one cold is all that is really relished. Then follow the monotonous hash, the grill, the fried-up pieces, till everybody is tired of the eternal warmed-up dinners. If it is summer, probably a third of the expensive joint goes bad before it can be eaten up.
TAKING THE BAG OUT OF THE OVEN.
The nose of the dish should be held about two inches under the grid. This allows the bag to be pulled out on to the dish.
Cooked in a paper bag, however, the small joint is full as juicy and savoury as the eighteen-pound sirloin can be, while a dainty piece of loin of lamb is a delicacy which must be tasted to be realised.