A piece weighing about eight pounds requires five or six hours to boil. Before boiling the beef make a dressing of bread crumbs, pepper, butter, salt, sweet herbs, mace, and an onion, all chopped fine and mixed with a beaten egg. Put the dressing between the fat and the lean of the beef; sew it up to keep the dressing in. Flour a cloth, tie the beef up tight in it, and let it boil five or six hours.
ROUND OF BEEF STEWED BROWN
Make incisions in the beef and stuff with chopped onions, salt, pepper, and sweet basil, thyme and parsley. Dredge the meat with flour, lay some slices of bacon over it, and put it to brown in a close oven. Slice two turnips, four carrots, four salsifies, three stalks of celery and two onions; add a quarter of a cup of tomato catsup or two large tomatoes; season with salt and put all in the oven to cook with the meat. After it has been cooking in the oven two hours and is brown, add a cup of water with the vegetables. Cover again closely, and let this stew for one or two hours more, or until the meat and vegetables are tender.
TO FRY A STEAK TO TASTE AS IF BROILED
It sometimes happens that when the fire is low and the coals gone out, you are called on to cook a steak. Then get up a quick blaze in the stove with some kindlings. Put in a pan, over the blaze, a little butter; when it is hot lay in your steak; let it fry quickly; while frying cover the pan. Work some butter, salt and pepper together in a tin pan, and when the steak is done to taste, let it lie in this mixture a few minutes, and then serve. Do not salt a steak until it is cooked as salt will toughen it and draw out its juices.
ROUND OF BEEF A LA BARONNE
Boil a fat round of beef for half an hour, take it up and put in a deep dish; cut gashes in the sides of the meat, put pepper and salt into each gash; fill the dish the meat is in with claret wine; set it in to bake, adding as it goes in the stove three blades of mace, a cup of pickled capers, or nasturtiums, three white onions cut small, and a bunch of parsley cut fine. Stew or bake all together until the meat is tender. Toast some slices of bread very brown, lay them in the bottom of a dish, lay in the beef and pour the gravy around it, unless it is preferred in a sauce boat.
ROASTED BEEFSTEAKS
Tenderloin or porterhouse steaks are the best for broiling. Have a clear fire of coals to broil on; rub the gridiron with a little fat of the meat; lay on the steak without salting, let it broil gently until one side is done, then turn. Catch the blood as you turn it, to make the gravy rich. If the steak is a large firm one, take a quarter of a pound of butter and work into it pepper and salt. When the steak is done lay it on to this seasoned butter, keep it hot until the butter melts, turn the steak in it a few times, put the blood with the gravy, and serve hot, with tomato sauce or catsup.
TO ROAST BEEF IN A STOVE