Cut slices from the loin or neck.
To fry pork steaks requires twenty-five or thirty minutes. Turn them often. If they are quite fat, pour off all that fries out when they are half done, and reserve it for some other use. Then dip the steaks in crumbs of bread with a little powdered sage, and lay them back into the frying-pan. When done through, take them up, dredge a little browned flour into the gravy, put in salt, pour in a gill of boiling water, and turn it instantly, as it boils up, upon the dish of steaks.
To Fry Sausages.
Sausages may be kept for some time, but fresh ones are considered best. Separate them, prick them to prevent their bursting, and lay them in a spider. If they are properly made, they will need no fat to fry them. Cook them slowly, at first, but brown every side of them before taking them up. They cook very well laid in a pan and set in a cooking-stove, but must be turned often, and care taken that they do not burn. Some persons fry bread in the fat which remains, in this way. Dip slices of bread, or crusts which have been cut and become dry, in salt and water, and lay them in the spider as soon as you take out the sausages. When brown one side, turn them. Serve them with the sausages. It takes twenty minutes to fry sausages in a spider, and half an hour to cook them in a stove. For those persons whose health is injured by eating them, it is best to lay them into a little water, and cook them thus, as long as they are usually fried, then pour off the water and brown them. This renders them comparatively harmless. The bread, fried as directed, does not absorb much fat.
To Boil a Ham or Shoulder.
A ham, weighing twelve pounds, should be cooked four or five hours. Boil it slowly in a plenty of water half the time it should be cooked; then take off the skin and any excrescences that were not removed by washing. Cover the fat side with pounded cracker, and lay it in a dripping pan, or iron basin, and put it into the stove. Let it remain the other half of the time.
The baking roasts out a great quantity of fat, and leaves the meat much more delicate. In warm weather it will keep in a dry, cool place, a long time. If after ten days you perceive a tendency to mould, set it a little while into the oven again. It is often a more agreeable dinner in hot weather than fresh meat.
If a ham is very salt, it should lie in water over night. In baking it, care should be taken that it is not done too much, and thus made hard. If the oven is a brick one and holds the heat a long time, it will do to put it in when the bread is taken out.
The fat which bakes out is good to fry eggs or potatoes, and if not strong, will do to use on the griddle.