Slices Of Ham Or Bacon

Slices of ham, or bacon, may be broiled on a; gridiron over a clear fire, or toasted with a fork: if you wish it curled, cut it thin, curl it, and put it on an iron skewer in a cheese-toaster, or Dutch oven, for fifteen or twenty minutes, turning it as it gets crisp.

Relishing Rashers Of Bacon

If you have any cold bacon in the larder, you may make a very nice dish of it by cutting it into slices rather more than a quarter of an inch thick; grate some crust of bread, and powder them well with it on both sides; lay the rashers in a cheese-toaster: they will be browned on one side in about three minutes; then turn them and do the other.

Observations

These are a delicious accompaniment to poached or fried eggs: the bacon, from having been boiled * first, eats extremely tender and mellow. They are a very excellent garnish round veal cutlets, or calf'shead hash, or green pease, or beans.

* To boil bacon, see No. 13.

Hashed Venison

If you have enough of its own gravy left, it. is preferable to any to warm it up in: if not, take a pint of mutton gravy, No. 347, or the bones and trimmings of the joint, (after you have cut off all the handsome slices you can, to make the hash;) put these into a pint of water, and stew them gently for an hour: put a bit of butter in another stewpan, about as big as a walnut: when melted, put to it as much flour as will dry up the butter, and stir it well together; add to it, by degrees, the gravy you have been making of the trimmings, give it a boil up, skim it, and strain it through a sieve, and it is ready to receive the venison: put it in, and let it just get warm: do not let it boil, or it will make the meat hard.

Jugged Hare

Wash it very nicely, cut it up into such pieces as you would help at table, and put it into a stone jar*, sufficiently large to well hold it, lining the bottom of the jar with a couple of ounces of bacon: put in some sweet herbs, a roll or two of rind of lemon, or Seville orange, and a fine large onion with five cloves stuck in it, a quarter pint of red wine, and the juice of a Seville orange or large lemon: tie the jar down closely with a bladder, so that no steam can escape; put a little hay in the bottom of a saucepan, in which place the jar, and pour in water till it reaches within three inches of the top of the jar; let the water boil for four or five hours, according to the age and size of the hare, keeping it boiling all the time, and fill up the pot as it boils away. When quite tender, strain off the gravy, (of which there will be found a good quantity, although no water was put in the jar,) clear it from fat, and thicken it with flour and butter, and give it a boil up: lay your hare in a soup-dish, and pour the gravy to it.

* Meat dressed by the heat of boiling water, without being exposed to it, is a mode of cookery that deserves to be more generally employed: it is deliciously stewed, and the whole of the nourishment and gravy are preserved. This, in chemical technicals, is called a Water Bath: in culinary, Bain Marie: which A. Chappelle, in his "Modern Cook," 3vo. page 25, London, 1744, translates, "Mary's Bath."

Observations

You may make a pudding, the same as for roast hare, and boil it in a cloth; and when you dish up your hare, cut your pudding in slices, and lay round it for garnish.