Put it in warm water for ten minutes, and wash it clean, then put it into the pot and cover it with water—let it simmer very gently and skim it carefully. A leg of ten pounds will take two and a half or three hours. Mutton, to be tender, should hang as long as it will keep.
A TURKEY.
Take a hen bird, pick nicely, singe, wash, draw the sinews of the thighs, and truss it. Make a stuffing of bread, herbs, salt, pepper, nutmeg, lemon-peel, a few oysters, or an anchovy, a bit of butter, some suet, and an egg, put this into the crop, fasten up the skin, and skim the pot most carefully to make it white. Serve with oyster sauce made rich with butter, a little cream, and a spoonful of soy or parsley and butter. Tongue, ham, or pickled pork, are the usual accompaniments.
A FOWL.
The legs, for boiling, should not be black.—Pick nicely, wash, singe, truss, and flour it—put it into boiling water, and simmer gently. A middling fowl will take forty minutes. Serve with parsley and butter, oyster, lemon, liver, or celery sauce.
Neither parsley and butter, liver and parsley, celery, onion, caper, curry, nor other sauce should be poured over boiled meats, but sent up separately in a boat.
VEGETABLES.
All vegetables are best when fresh from the garden,—when dead they are useless. They are also in the greatest perfection when in the greatest plenty;—unripe vegetables are unwholesome.
Greens must be carefully picked, neatly trimmed, washed quite clean from vermin, and laid on a cullender to drain. Then, having ready a well-tinned saucepan, with plenty of clean, soft, boiling water, into which some salt has been thrown, and the scum taken off, plunge them into it, boil them quickly, watch them, and keep continually pressing them under the water with a fork as they rise; and when they begin to sink of themselves, they are done, and must be taken up instantly, and drained dry; for if over done, they will lose not only their crispness and beautiful appearance, but their flavour also. Cabbages, savoys, and turnip-tops, require that the water should be changed when half done, the second water should be boiling, and if managed as above directed, they will eat much the milder and sweeter for it. This is the whole art of dressing vegetables to look green and eat well. We therefore deprecate the use of those factitious and filthy expedients recommended by some, and practised by many, to give, as they pretend, a good colour, to boiled vegetables. This is the best way;—and all artificial means ought to be avoided, as unnecessary and pernicious.
Esculent roots of all kinds may be set on to boil in cold water.