r before the time of
serving dinner, so that the joint may take a good colour.

553. BY MEANS OF A JAR, many dishes, which will be enumerated under
their special heads, may be economically prepared in the oven. The
principal of these are soup, gravies, jugged hare, beef tea; and this
mode of cooking may be advantageously adopted with a ham, which has
previously been covered with a common crust of flour and water.

554. ALL DISHES PREPARED FOR BAKING should be more highly seasoned than
when intended to be roasted. There are some dishes which, it may be
said, are at least equally well cooked in the oven as by the roaster;
thus, a shoulder of mutton and baked potatoes, a fillet or breast of
veal, a sucking pig, a hare, well basted, will be received by
connoisseurs as well, when baked, as if they had been roasted. Indeed,
the baker's oven, or the family oven, may often, as has been said, be
substituted for the cook and the spit with greater economy and
convenience.

555. A BAKING-DISH, of which we give an engraving, should not be less
than 6 or 7 inches deep; so that the meat, which of course cannot be
basted, can stew in its own juices. In the recipe for each dish, full
explanations concerning any special points in relation to it will be
given.

BOILING.

556. BOILING, or the preparation of meat by hot water, though one of the
easiest processes in cookery, requires skilful management. Boiled meat
should be tender, savoury, and full of its own juice, or natural gravy;
but, through the carelessness and ignorance of cooks, it is too often
sent to table hard, tasteless, and innutritious. To insure a successful
result in boiling flesh, the heat of the fire must be judiciously
regulated, the proper quantity of water must be kept up in the pot, and
the scum which rises to the surface must be carefully removed.

557. MANY WRITERS ON COOKERY assert that the meat to be boiled should be
put into cold water, and that the pot should be heated gradually; but
Liebig, the highest authority on all matters connected with the
chemistry of food, has shown that meat so treated loses some of its most
nutritious constituents. "If the flesh," says the great chemist, "be
introduced into the boiler when the water is in a state of brisk
ebullition, and if the boiling be kept up for a few minutes, and the pot
then placed in a warm place, so that the temperature of the water is
kept at 158 deg. to 165 deg., we have the united conditions for g