Peel a good-sized onion, stick into it half a dozen whole cloves, and place it in the center of an earthenware baking-dish, or a granite-ware basin, or, best of all, the baking-pan of a double pudding-dish. Cut any cold meat into small and rather thin slices. Roll each piece in flour mixed with pepper and salt. Arrange the pieces of meat around the onion, filling the dish three quarters full.
Put the bone of the meat and all of the scraps into a saucepan, cover them with cold water, add a bay-leaf and soup vegetables, and simmer the whole for an hour or longer. Strain off the stock.
Put a tablespoonful of butter in a saucepan with a teaspoonful of onion juice, let it brown, then add a tablespoonful of the flour used for rolling the meat, let the flour brown, then add one and a half cupfuls of the stock and stir until it becomes a little thickened. Add more pepper and salt if necessary, and a dash of mustard and of nutmeg, also a few drops of Worcestershire sauce, if convenient. Let this sauce become a little cooled, then pour it over the meat, and cover the whole with mashed potato. The potato should be seasoned by adding to it a little hot milk, with melted butter in it, and a little salt, and then be whipped with a fork until it is smooth, light, and white. The potato may be put through a ricer over the meat, or be piled on it roughly and scratched with a fork into cone shape, or be put through a pastry-bag with star tube as in illustration. In the latter case it must have the white of an egg mixed with it in order to hold its form when baked. Touch the potato lightly over the top with yolk of egg diluted with milk to make it brown well. Put the dish in the oven for ten to fifteen minutes, or long enough to brown the potato a little and heat the meat. When the sauce begins to bubble through the potato at the edges it is done.
The meat, having been cooked already, will be toughened if cooked a second time and needs only to be heated.
Wrap a folded napkin around the dish before sending it to the table in case a kitchen basin has been used. This is a presentable dish and will be well liked.
MEAT AND POTATO PIE
Butter a pie-plate, spread over it like an under-crust well-seasoned mashed potato. Spread it about a quarter of an inch thick on the bottom. Make a border two inches wide, and thick enough to rise a little above the dish. Score the top of the potato border with a fork and touch it lightly with egg. Fill the center with rare cold beef or mutton cut into dice. Pour over the meat well-seasoned brown sauce and sprinkle the top with a few buttered bread crumbs. Do not let any of the sauce get on the potato border. Place it in the oven for a few minutes to brown.
MINCED MEAT WITH POTATO RINGS
Mince any kind of meat. Make it creamy with brown sauce for dark meat, or with white sauce for veal or chicken; or moisten the minced meat with stock, add pepper and salt, a few drops of onion juice, and, if convenient, a little tomato. Chopped mushrooms added to the mince improve it very much. Spread the creamed mince flat on the dish, or form a mound as in illustration. Sprinkle the top with crumbs browned in butter.
Mash some boiled potatoes, season them with butter, salt, and enough milk to moisten them well, and one or two beaten eggs; one egg is enough for a pint of potato. Beat the potato until it is light and white. Press it through a pastry-bag with star tube into rings. Paint the rings with yolk of egg diluted with a little milk and put them in the oven to brown. The potato will not hold its form unless the egg is added. Arrange the rings around the minced meat and fill the centers with corn and spinach alternately, as in illustration, or with any other vegetables.