To Boil Meat:

1. Give attention to the fire, and build it up gradually with small pieces of coal, so as to make it burn clear and bright.

2. You must not have a smoky fire for boiling, or the meat will get smoked. Start with a good fire, and keep it up by adding occasionally small coal, and so prevent smoke as much as possible.

N. B. - You do not require such a clear, bright fire as for roasting. 2

3. Take a saucepan sufficiently large to hold the joint to be cooked.

4. Fill the saucepan almost full of cold water, and put it on the fire to warm.

N. B. - Salt should always be added to the water in the saucepan to make the water taste, unless the meat to be cooked is already salted, in which case it should be omitted.

5. Now take the joint, say, for example, a piece of the silver-side of beef, salted.

6. See that it is quite clean, and, if necessary, scrape it with a knife, and wipe it over with a clean cloth.

N. B. - Meat should not, as a rule, be washed in water, as it takes some of the goodness out. Meat that has been kept some time, and is not quite fresh, might be washed with vinegar and water, but it must be well wiped afterward.

N. B. - Salt meat must not be washed with vinegar and water, but only with salt and water.

7. Now weigh the piece of salt beef, so as to find out how long it will take to boil, as ten minutes .are allowed for each pound of meat.

N. B. - This rule refers to the boiling of all meat except pork, which requires fifteen minutes to each pound of meat.

a.-In boiling fresh meat to be eaten, the joint should be first plunged into boiling water, in order that the albumen on the outside of the joint may become hardened, and so prevent the escape of the juices of the meat.

b.-The temperature of the water should then be lowered gradually (by adding a small quantity of cold water and drawing the saucepan to the side of the fire), and the meat allowed to simmer gently, or it will become tough.

C.-In boiling meat for the purpose of making soup, the meat should be put into cold water, in order to extract all the goodness from it.

D.-The water should be brought gradually to boiling point, then moved to the side of the fire, and left to simmer gently for some length of time.

N. B. - Salt meat must be put into warm water, so as to extract a little of the salt before the pores of the skin are closed up. If the meat were put into boiling water, the pores of the skin would be closed, and the meat would be hardened by the salt not being allowed to escape.

8. When the water in the saucepan is warm, take the beef, which weighs say eight pounds (it will therefore take about one hour and twenty minutes), and put it in the saucepan. There should be only just enough water to cover the joint.

9. Let the water just boil up, and then move the saucepan to the side of the fire, and let it simmer gently for the remainder of the time.

10. As soon as the water comes to the boil, you must take a large spoon and skim it carefully.

N. B. - The scum should be skimmed off directly it rises, or it will boil down again in the meat and spoil it. Scum is the impurity which rises from the meat.

N. B. - Be very careful not to let the meat boil, or it will be hardened and tough.

11. When the meat is sufficiently cooked, take it carefully out of the saucepan, and put it on a hot dish for serving. Pour about a gill of the liquor (in which it was boiled) round the joint (This makes the gravy, and when the joint is cut, the juices from the meat will add to it.)

N. B. - The liquor from boiled meat can always be used for different purposes, and should therefore never be thrown away, but poured into a clean basin and put aside to cool. The fat should be carefully removed from the top of the liquor while it is cold, before being used. Salt liquor is often used for making pea-soup.