Parboil four large sweetbreads, having first blanched them. When cold, lard them all over the surface, with slips of bacon the size of small straws. Lay them in a shallow pan, putting under each sweetbread a piece of nice fresh butter with a very little flour mixed into it. Pour into the pan a glass of nice white wine, mixed with the juice and grated yellow rind of a lemon. Season also with grated nutmeg. Or for sauce, you may use mushroom catchup, with a little salad oil stirred into it.
If you do not live in a place where nice fresh butter is to be obtained, endeavor to do without butter at all, rather than use that which is strong, rancid, or too salt. Bad butter tastes through every thing—spoils every thing, and is also extremely unwholesome, as decomposition (or in plain terms putrefaction,) has already commenced. Rather than use what makes all your food taste worse instead of better, try to substitute something else—such as beef or fresh pork drippings, suet, lard, or olive oil; or, molasses, honey, or stewed fruit. We know that with these it is possible to live in health for years, without tasting butter. Nevertheless, good butter is a good thing, and an improvement to all sorts of cookery.
PORK.
PORK.—
Young pork has a thin rind or skin, easily indented by pressing with the finger, and the lean will break by pinching. If fresh, the meat is smooth and dry; but if damp and clammy, it is tainted. If the fat is rough with little kernels, the pig has had a disease resembling the measles, and to eat it is poisonous. Pigs that have short legs, and thick necks, are the best. Pigs fed entirely on slop make very bad pork. They should be kept up for at least two months, fed with corn, and not allowed during the time of fattening to eat any sort of trash. No animal tastes more of its food than a pig. If allowed to eat the garbage of fish, they will not only have a fishy taste, but a smell of fish so intolerable, when cooking, that such pork cannot be endured in the house. During the two months that they are kept up to fatten, all their food must be wholesome as well as abundant, and it does them much good to have soap-suds given to them occasionally. Let them have plenty of corn, and plenty of fresh water. They will thrive better and make finer pork, if their pens are not allowed to be dirty. No animal actually likes dirt, and even pigs would be clean if they knew how. It is very beneficial to young pigs to wash them well in soap and water. We have seen this often done with great care.
The pork in Spain and Portugal is delicious, from being fed chiefly on the large chestnuts, of which there is great abundance in those countries. These pigs are short-legged and thick-bodied—a profitable species. The best pieces of a pig are the hind-leg and loin; the next is the shoulder, or fore-leg. The spare-rib, (pronounced sparrib by the English,) affords so little meat, and the bones are so tedious to pick, that it is seldom seen on good American tables, nothing being popular with us that cannot be eaten fast or fastish.
Pork must be thoroughly cooked; done well, and completely to the very bone. Who ever asked for a slice of pork done rare? Who could eat pork with the blood appearing, when served? So it is with veal. Underdone veal, or underdone chicken, is not to be thought of without disgust.
Pork, for boiling, is always previously salted or corned. Fresh pork, however, is very good stewed or cooked slowly in a very little water, and with plenty of vegetables in the same pot. The vegetables should be potatos, (either sweet or white,) pared and cut into pieces—parsnips the same, or yams in thick slices. For corned pork cook the vegetables separately from the meat, or they will taste too salt and fat. They should be cabbage, or green sprouts, green beans or peas, green corn, young poke, squash, pumpkin, or cashaw, (winter squash,) boiled, mashed, and squeezed.
For salt pork, in winter, have dried beans or dried peas; first boiled, and then baked.