Breakfast Stew of Beef+

Cut up two pounds of beef - not too lean - into pieces an inch long; put them into a saucepan with just enough water to cover them, and stew gently for two hours. Set away until next morning, when season with pepper, salt, sweet marjoram or summer savory, chopped onion, and parsley. Stew half an hour longer, and add a teaspoonful of sauce or catsup, and a tablespoonful of browned flour wet up with cold water; finally, if you wish to have it very good, half a glass of wine. Boil up once, and pour into a covered deep dish.

This is an economical dish, for it can be made of the commoner parts of the beef, and exceedingly nice for winter breakfasts. Eaten with corn-bread and stewed potatoes, it will soon win its way to a place in the "stock company " of every judicious housewife.

Another Breakfast Dish

Cut thin slices of cold roast beef, and lay them in a tin saucepan set in a pot of boiling water. Cover them with a gravy made of three tablespoonfuls of melted butter, one of walnut catsup, a teaspoonful of vinegar, a little salt and pepper, a spoonful of currant jelly, a teaspoonful made mustard, and some warm water. Cover tightly, and steam for half an hour, keeping the water in the outer vessel on a hard boil.

If the meat is under-done, this is particularly nice.

Beef Hash

To two parts cold roast or boiled corned beef, chopped fine, put one of mashed potatoes, a little pepper, salt, milk, and melted butter. Turn all into a frying-pan, and stir until it is heated through and smoking hot, but not until it browns. Put into a deep dish, and if stiff enough, smooth as you would mashed potato, into a hillock.

Or, you can cease stirring for a few minutes, and let a brown crust form on the under side; then turn out whole into a flat dish, the brown side uppermost.

Or, mould the mixture into flat cakes; dip these in beaten egg flour, and fry in hot drippings.

The remains of beef a la-mode are very good prepared in any of these ways. A little catsup and mustard are an improvement to plain cold beef, thus hashed.

Beef-Steak Pie

Cut the steak into pieces an inch long, and stew with the bone (cracked) in just enough water to cover the meat until it is half-done. At the same time parboil a dozen potatoes in another pot. If you wish a bottom crust - a doubtful question - line a pudding-dish with a good paste, made according to the receipt given below. Put in a layer of the beef, with salt and pepper, and a very little chopped onion; then one of sliced potatoes, with a little butter scattered upon them, and so on, until the dish is full. Pour over all the gravy in which the meat is stewed, having first thrown away the bone and thickened with browned flour. Cover with a crust thicker than the lower, leaving a slit in the middle.

Crust for Meat-Pies+

1 quart of flour.

3 tablespoonfuls of lard.

2 1/2 cups milk.

1 teaspoonful of soda wet with hot water, and stirred into the milk.

2 teaspoonfuls of cream-tartar sifted into the dry flour.

1 teaspoonful of salt.

Work up very lightly and quickly, and do not get too stiff.

If you can get prepared flour, omit the soda and cream-tartar.