Fish, and all other articles for frying, after being nicely prepared, should be laid on a board and dredged with flour or meal mixed with salt:  when it becomes dry on one side, turn it, and dredge the other.  For broiling, have very clear coals, sprinkle a little salt and pepper over the pieces, and when done, dish them, and pour over some melted butter and chopped parsley—­this is for broiled veal, wild fowl, birds or poultry:  beef-steaks and mutton chops require only a table-spoonful of hot water to be poured over.  Slice an onion in the dish before you put in the steaks or chops, and garnish both with rasped horse-radish.  To have viands served in perfection, the dishes should be made hot, either by setting them over hot water, or by putting some in them, and the instant the meats are laid in and garnished, put on a pewter dish cover.  A dinner looks very enticing, when the steam rises from each dish on removing the covers, and if it be judiciously ordered, will have a double relish.  Profusion is not elegance—­a dinner justly calculated for the company, and consisting for the greater part of small articles, correctly prepared, and neatly served up, will make a much more pleasing appearance to the sight, and give a far greater gratification to the appetite, than a table loaded with food, and from the multiplicity of dishes, unavoidably neglected in the preparation, and served up cold.

There should always be a supply of brown flour kept in readiness to thicken brown gravies, which must be prepared in the following manner:  put a pint of flour in a Dutch oven, with some coals under it; keep constantly stirring it until it is uniformly of a dark brown, but none of it burnt, which would look like dirt in the gravy.  All kitchens should be provided with a saw for trimming meat, and also with larding needles.

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Beef A-la-mode.

Take the bone from a round of beef, fill the space with a forcemeat made of the crumbs of a stale loaf, four ounces of marrow, two heads of garlic chopped with thyme and parsley, some nutmeg, cloves, pepper and salt, mix it to a paste with the yelks of four eggs beaten, stuff the lean part of the round with it, and make balls of the remainder; sew a fillet of strong linen wide enough to keep it round and compact, put it in a vessel just sufficiently large to hold it, add a pint of red wine, cover it with sheets of tin or iron, set it in a brick oven properly heated, and bake it three hours; when done, skim the fat from the gravy, thicken it with brown flour, add some mushroom and walnut catsup, and serve it up garnished with forcemeat balls fried.  It is still better when eaten cold with sallad.

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Brisket of beef baked.

Bone a brisket of beef, and make holes in it with a sharp knife about an inch apart, fill them alternately with fat bacon, parsley and oysters, all chopped small and seasoned with pounded cloves and nutmeg, pepper and salt, dredge it well with flour, lay it in a pan with a pint of red wine and a large spoonful of lemon pickle; bake it three hours, take the fat from the gravy and strain it; serve it up garnished with green pickles.