To Bake Meat:

. 1. You must have a good fire, and keep it up, adding by degrees small pieces of coal, as the oven is required to be very hot.

N. B. - If it is a close range with which you are dealing, you should pull out the damper placed over the oven, in order to draw all the heat of the fire toward the oven. The ventilator1 of the oven should be closed.

N. B. - In kitchen stoves there is usually either a handle at the top of the oven, to be pulled out for opening the ventilator, or a slide-ventilator at the bottom.

2. Test the heat of the oven by the thermometer, which is fixed in the door of the oven. The heat should rise to 240° Fahr.

3. See that the joint is clean, as directed in the Lesson on " Roasting," Note 2. Weigh it, to find out how long it will take to bake, as ten minutes are allowed for each pound of weight.

N. B. - When you have a joint without bone, you must allow about fifteen minutes to each pound of weight, as it is solid meat.

4. Take the hot-water tin on which the stand for the meat is placed, lift up the upper tin or tray, and fill the under tin half full of warm water; then fit on the upper tin.

1 As a rule, American ranges and stoves are not supplied with a separate arrangement for ventilating the ovens. The heat is usually controlled by opening and closing the damper in front of the fire. Ability to manage a range or stove in this respect comes only with experience. But in all our generally-approved ranges and stoves a competent cook can obtain well-baked meat, such as is described in this lesson, by making the oven very hot at first, and after a little, partially or wholly closing the damper, to lessen combustion.

N. B. - In one corner of the upper tin is a small hole for the escape of steam. The water must only just reach this hole, and not come into it.

N. B. - The water is placed in the tin to prevent the tin and the meat from getting burnt, and so causing a disagreeable smell.

5. Place the stand on the hot-water tin, to raise the joint and prevent it from standing in its own dripping, which would sodden and spoil the meat.

6. Now take the joint, which weighs say seven pounds (it will, therefore, take one hour and ten minutes to bake), and put it on the stand. Dredge flour over it.

7. Put the tin, with the meat, in the oven. The oven should be kept very hot for the first five minutes, in order to form a brown crust on the outside of the joint, to keep in the juices of the meat; after that time the ventilator of the oven should be opened, so as to allow the steam to escape, or the meat would get soddened.

N. B. - Meat that is frozen must be gradually warmed to thaw it, before shutting it up in the hot oven, or it will be tough.

8. Baste the joint every fifteen minutes with the drippings that run from the meat into the pah, using the dripping-ladle.

N. B. - Joints that are not very fat must be even more frequently basted, or they will burn. If there is not enough dripping from the meat, a little extra dripping should be put in the pan.

N. B. - Joints that have no fat should be covered with a piece of whity-brown paper which has been spread with butter or dripping; it will prevent the meat catching too quickly.

9. Turn the joint over occasionally, as the upper side will brown quicker than the under.

N. B. - Potatoes, washed and peeled, or a small suet or dripping and flour pudding (see "Puddings," Lesson 28), or a Yorkshire pudding (see "Puddings," Lesson 29), might be baked under the meat; but they should be put in only half an hour before the meat is finished.

10. Just before you dish up the joint, sprinkle a salt-spoonful of salt over it, and then baste it well.

11. Serve the joint on a hot dish (as described in the Lesson on "Roasting," Note 18), and act with regard to the dripping according to N. B. after Note 19.

N. B. - Pastry or bread, etc., should not be baked in the oven at the same time as the meat, for the steam would prevent their baking properly. For baking small patties or tartlets made of puff-paste, the heat of the oven should rise to 300° Fahr. For meat-pies, tarts, etc., the heat should rise to 280°, and be reduced, after a quarter of an hour, to 220°.