Always have a good light to fry by, that you may see when you have got the right colour: a lamp fixed on a stem with a loaded foot, that has an arm which will lengthen out, and slide up and down like a reading candlestick, is a most useful appendage to a kitchen fire-place, which are seldom light enough for the nicer operations of cookery. After all, if you do not drain the fat well from what you have fried, your cooking will do you no credit, especially those things that are full dressed in bread crumbs.

To fry fish in general, see the receipt to fry soles, which is the only circumstantial account of this process that has yet been printed, if the cook will study it with a little attention, she will soon learn to fry fish in the utmost perfection.

How To Clarify Drippings

Put your drippings into a clean saucepan over a clear fire; when it is just going to boil, take it off, and pour them into a pan half full of hot water; set it in a cool place till the next day, you will find the drippings at the top of the water as clean and white as can be.

Most people put the drippings into cold water, but that sets them at once, and the foul parts will not be deposited half so well.

Observations

Sweet and well cleansed drippings, and the fat skimmings of the broth pot, will baste every thing as well as butter, except game and poultry, and should supply the place of butter for common fries, and for frying most things are equal, if not superior to lard.

How To Melt Suet To Fry With

Cut beef or mutton suet into small thin slices, put it into a thick and well tinned saucepan, and set it over a very slow stove, or in an oven, till it is all melted but the skins; strain it into a clean brown pan through a hair sieve. When quite cold, tie a paper over it and keep it for use. Hogslard is prepared in the same way.

Observations

The waste occasioned by the present fashion of feeding cattle till they are almost as much fat as lean, may, by good management, be in some measure prevented, by cutting off the superfluous suet, and preparing it as above, or make puddings of it.

Rump Steaks Fried

Let the steaks be cut rather thinner than for broiling, put some butter into an iron fryingpan, when it is hot lay in the steaks, and keep turning them till they are done enough; lay them in a hot dish before the fire; then put a tablespoonful of flour into the fryingpan with half a pint of hot water, a tablespoonful of ale, or small beer, that is neither bitter nor stale, a tablespoonful of mushroom catsup, a teaspoonful of salt, and half a teaspoonful of ground black pepper; rub and boil up together for a couple of minutes, and run the sauce through a hair sieve over the steaks.

Observations

We like this way of dressing a beef steak much better than broiling, as all the gravy is preserved, and the meat eats more tender and is more equally dressed.

Beef Steaks And Onions

Fry the steaks according to the directions given In the preceding receipt; lay them on a dish to keep hot: have ready some onions sliced as thin as possible, fry them brown in the same pan the steaks were fried in; when done, lake them up with a fish slice, and lay them on the steaks, then finish the sauce as in the foregoing receipt, or prepare the onion sauce as No. 299.