BAKED TONGUE.—Take a large smoked tongue, put it into warm water and soak it all day. Change the water in the evening, and then let it remain in soak all night. Before you cook it, trim the root handsomely. Make a coarse paste or dough, merely of flour and water, as it is not to be eaten. Roll it out thin, and enclose the tongue in it. Put it into an oven, and bake it slowly. It will require four hours or more. When you think it is done, break a little of the paste just over the thickest part, and try it by sticking a fork through it. If not perfectly tender, let it bake a while longer. When quite done, remove the paste, and either serve up the tongue, or set it away to get cold. This is the best way of cooking a tongue to be eaten cold. If to be eaten warm, send it to table surrounded with mashed potatoes, and the root concealed with parsley sprigs. The best way to carve a tongue, is to cut it across in round slices, beginning at the middle. If cut lengthways the flavour will be impaired. Nevertheless, if you have two tongues, and wish to make a large handsome-looking dish of them, (having first removed the root,) split one lengthways, and lay the two halves spread open and near together on a bed of mashed potatoes; and cut the other tongue into circular slices. Arrange these slices in a handsome form or pattern all round the split tongue that occupies the centre of the mashed potatoe; and decorate the whole with sprigs of double parsley. If the tongues are cold, instead of mashed potatoe, lay them on a bed of salad-dressed lettuce, cut or chopped very small; or on chopped celery, dressed as lettuce.
FILLET OF PORK.—Cut a fillet or round, handsomely and evenly, from a fine leg of fresh pork. Remove the bone. Make a stuffing or force-meat of grated bread-crumbs; butter; a tea-spoonful of sweet-marjoram or tarragon leaves; and sage leaves enough to make a small table-spoonful, when minced or rubbed fine; all well mixed, and slightly seasoned with pepper and salt. Add some beaten yolk of egg to bind the whole together; then stuff it closely into the hole from whence the bone was taken. Score the skin of the pork in circles to go all round the fillet. These circles should be very close together, or not quite half an inch apart. Rub into them, slightly, a little powdered sage. Put it on the spit, and roast it well, till it is thoroughly done throughout; as pork, if the least underdone, is not fit to eat. Place it for the first hour not very close to the fire, that the meat may get well heated all through, before the skin begins to harden so as to prevent the heat from penetrating sufficiently. Then set it as near the fire as it can be placed without danger of scorching. Keep it roasting steadily with a bright, good, regular fire, for two or three hours, or longer still if it is a large fillet. It may require near four hours. Baste it at the beginning with sweet oil (which will make the skin very crisp) or with lard. Afterwards, baste it with its own gravy. When done, skim the fat from the gravy, and then dredge in a little flour to thicken it. Send the pork to table with the gravy in a boat; and a small tureen of apple-sauce, made very thick, flavoured with lemon, and sweetened well.
A fillet of pork is excellent stewed slowly in a very little water, having in the same stew-pot some sweet potatoes, peeled, split, and cut into long pieces. If stewed, put no sage in the stuffing; and remove the skin of the pork. This is an excellent family dish in the autumn.
ITALIAN PORK.—Take a nice leg of fresh pork; rub it well with fine salt, and let it lie in the salt for a week or ten days. When you wish to cook it, put the pork into a large pot with just sufficient water to cover it; and let it simmer, slowly, during four hours; skimming it well. Then take it out, and lay it on a large dish. Pour the water from the pot into an earthen pan; skim it, and let it cool while you are skinning the pork. Then put into the pot, a pint of good cider vinegar, mixed with half a pound of brown sugar, and a pint of the water in which the pork has been boiled, and from which all the fat has been carefully skimmed off. Put in the pork with the upper side towards the bottom of the pot. Set it again over the fire, (which must first be increased,) and heat the inside of the pot-lid by standing it upright against the front of the fire. Then cover the pot closely, and let the pork stew for an hour and a half longer; basting it frequently with the liquid around it, and keeping the pot-lid as hot as possible that the meat may be well browned. When done, the pork will have somewhat the appearance of being coated with molasses. Serve up the gravy with it. What is left of the meat may be sliced cold for breakfast or luncheon.
You may stew with it when the pork is put into the pot a second time, some large chesnuts, previously boiled and peeled. Or, instead of chesnuts, sweet potatoes, scraped, split, and cut into small pieces.
PORK OLIVES.—Cut slices from a fillet or leg of cold fresh pork. Make a force-meat in the usual manner, only substituting for sweet herbs some sage-leaves chopped fine. When the slices are covered with the force-meat, and rolled up and tied round, stew them slowly either in cold gravy left of the pork, or in fresh lard. Drain them well before they go to table. Serve them up on a bed of mashed turnips or potatoes, or of mashed sweet potatoes, if in season.