Take a leg of mutton and trim it nicely. Put it into a pot with three pints of water; or with two pints of water and one quart of gravy drawn from bones, trimmings, and coarse pieces of meat. Add some slices of carrots, and a little salt. Stew it slowly three hours. Then put in small onions, small turnips, tomatas or tomata catchup, and shred or powdered sweet marjoram to your taste, and let it stew three hours longer. A large leg will require from first to last from six hours and a half to seven hours stewing. But though it must be tender and well done all through, do not allow it to stew to rags. Serve it up with the vegetables and gravy round it. Have mashed potatoes in another dish.
The best way of cooking lamb is to roast it; when drest otherwise it is insipid, and not so good as mutton. A hind-quarter of eight pounds will be done in about two hours; a fore-quarter of ten pounds, in two hours and a half; a leg of five pounds will take from an hour and a quarter to an hour and a half; a loin about an hour and a half. Lamb, like veal and pork, is not eatable unless thoroughly done; no one preferring it rare, as is frequently the case with beef and mutton.
Wash the meat, wipe it dry, spit it, and cover the fat with paper. Place it before a clear brisk fire. Baste it at first with a little salt and water, and then with its own drippings. Remove the paper when the meat is nearly done, and dredge the lamb with a little flour. Afterwards baste it with butter. Do not take it off the spit till you see it drop white gravy.
Prepare some mint sauce by stripping from the stalks the leaves of young green mint, mincing them very fine, and mixing them with vinegar and sugar. There must be just sufficient vinegar to moisten the mint, but not enough to make the sauce liquid. Send it to table in a boat, and the gravy in another boat. Garnish with sliced lemon.
In carving a quarter of lamb, separate the shoulder from the breast, or the leg from the ribs, sprinkle a little salt and pepper, and squeeze on some lemon juice.
It should be accompanied by asparagus, green peas, and lettuce.
PORK, HAM, ETC.
GENERAL REMARKS.
In cutting up pork, you have the spare-rib, shoulder, griskin or chine, the loin, middlings and leg; the head, feet, heart and liver. On the spare-rib and chine there is but little meat, and the pieces called middlings consist almost entirely of fat. The best parts are the loin, and the leg or hind-quarter. Hogs make the best pork when from two and a half to four years old. They should be kept up and fed with corn at least six weeks before they are killed, or their flesh will acquire a disagreeable taste from the trash and offal which they eat when running at large. The Portuguese pork, which is fed on chestnuts, is perhaps the finest in the world.