APPENDIX, CONTAINING NEW RECEIPTS. (continued 2)
Reading edition
STEWED SALT PORK.—
Take a good piece of salt pork, (not too fat,) and, early in the evening, lay it in water, to soak all night, changing the water about bed-time. In the morning, drain and wash the pork, and cut it in very thin slices, seasoning it with pepper. Put a layer of this pork in the bottom of a large dinner-pot, and then a layer of slices of bread. Next put in a layer of potatoes, pared and cut up; then another layer of pork slices, covered by another layer of sliced bread; and then again potatoes. Proceed till the pot is two-thirds full, finishing with bread. Lastly, pour on just sufficient water to stew it well and keep it from burning. Set it over the fire, and let it cook slowly for three hours. If it becomes too dry, add a little boiling water.
This is a homely dish, but a very good one, particularly on a farm or on ship-board. At sea, you must substitute biscuit for bread.
Cold pork, left from yesterday, may be cooked in this manner.
TO MAKE GOOD TOAST.—
Cut the bread in even slices, and moderately thick. When cut too thin, toast is hard and tasteless. It is much nicer when the crust is pared off before toasting. A long-handled toasting-fork (to be obtained at the hardware or tin stores) is far better than the usual toasting apparatus, made to stand before the fire with the slices of bread slipped in between, and therefore liable to be browned in stripes, dark and light alternately; unless the bread, while toasting, is carefully slipped along, so that the whole may receive equal benefit from the fire. With a fork, whose handle is near a yard in length, the cook can sit at a comfortable distance from the fire, and the bread will be equally browned all over; when one side is done, taking it off from the fork, and turning the other. Send it to table hot, in a heated plate, or in a toast-rack; and butter it to your taste. Toast should neither be burnt nor blackened in any way. You may lay it in even piles, and butter it before it goes to table; cutting each slice in half.