The prime season for pork is from Michaelmas to March. Take particular care it be done enough: other meats underdone are unpleasant to some, but pork is uneatable by all. - Remem-ber your mustard pot.

A Leg

Of eight pounds, will require two hours and a half: score the skin across in narrow stripes, about half an inch apart; stuff the knuckle with a little sage and onion minced fine; rub a Utile sweet oil on the skin with a paste brush, or a goose feather; this makes the crackling crisp and brown much better than basting it with dripping; and it will be a better colour than all the art and diligence of cookery can make it any other way. This way of dressing, also, always prevents the skin from blistering.

Leg Of Pork Roasted Without The Skin, Or Mock Goose

Parboil it for half an hour, take off the skin, and then put it down to roast, and baste it with butter, and make a savoury powder of dried and powdered sage, ground black pepper, salt, nutmeg, and bread crumbs; sprinkle it with this from time to time, as it roasts; put half a pint of made gravy into the dish.

The Griskin

Of seven or eight pounds may be dressed in the above manner: it will take an hour and a half roasting.

Bacon, Sparerib

Usually weighs about eight or nine pounds, and will take from two to three hours to roast it well; not exactly according to its weight, but from the thickness of the meat upon it. which varies very much: lay the thick end nearest to the fire. A proper bald sparerib (so called because almost all the meat is pared off.) with a good clear fire, will be done in an hour and a half.

"When you lay it down, dust on some flour, and baste it with a little butter: dry twelve sage leaves, and rub them through a hair sieve: about a quarter of an hour before the meat is done, baste it, strew on the pulverized sage, and dust on a ladle of flour, and sprinkle it with a little salt.

Observations

Make it a general rule never to pour gravy over any thing that is roasted; by so doing, the dredging is washed off, and it eats insipid. Some people carve a sparerib by cutting out slices in the thick part at the bottom of the bones: when this meat is cut away, the bones may be easily separated, and are esteemed very sweet picking. Apple sauce, mashed potatoes, and good mustard.

Loin

Of five pounds, must be kept to the fire about an hour and a half. Score the skin, and rub it with salad oil, as directed in the receipt for the leg; and you may sprinkle over it some of the savoury powder recommended for the mock goose.

A.Chine

Is parted down the back-bone, so as to have but one side. A good fire will roast it in two hours: if not parted, three hours.

Roast Pig

A roasting pig is considered to be in primest order for the spit when about three weeks old; should be fat, and newly killed. It is not like other meats, good as long as they are sweet. The pig loses part of its goodness every hour after it is killed. To be in perfection, it should be killed in the morning to eat at dinner; and it requires very nice and careful roasting; the ends must have much more fire than the middle. For this purpose is contrived an iron to hang before the middle part, called a pig-iron. When the cook has not this, she must keep the fire fiercest at the two ends. Take the crumb of a stale twopenny loaf, i. e. about four ounces, rub it through a cullender; mince fine a handful of sage, about two ounces and a half, and a large onion, about an ounce and a half #; mix these together with some pepper and salt, and a bit of butter as big as an egg; fill the belly of the pig with this, and sew it up; lay it to the fire, and take half a pound of fresh butter and keep basting it till it is quite done, and do not leave it a moment, for it requires the most vigilant attendance.

Roast it at a clear brisk fire, at some distance, that the crackling may get nicely crisped and browned without being blistered or burnt: it will be enough in about an hour and a half. Before you take it off the spit, cutoff the head, and part that and the body down the middle; chop the brains very fine with some boiled sage, and mix them with some good beef gravy in a sauce-tureen. Send up plenty of gravy in the dish, and atureen-ful besides. Lay your pig back to back into the dish, with one half of the head on one side, the other half on the other side, and the ears one at each end, which you must take care to make nice and crisp, or you will get scolded as well as the good man was who bought his wife a pig with only one ear.

* Boil the sage and onion in a little water (before they are cut); it softens and takes off the rawness of their flavour.

Observations

Some professors of cookery insist upon it that nothing so well produces and preserves the beauty and crispness of the crackling as sweet oil, applied as directed in the receipt to roast a leg of pork.