If you have about five pounds of beef, take one pound of bread, soak it in water, pour off the water and mash it fine, adding a bit of butter the size of half a hen’s egg, salt, mace, pepper, cloves, half a teaspoonful each, pounded fine.
Mix all with a tablespoonful of flour and two eggs.
Then cut holes through the beef and put in half of this seasoning, and put it in a bake-pan with boiling water enough to cover it.
Put the pan lid, heated, over it, and a few coals on it, and let it stew two hours, then take it up and spread the other half of the dressing on the top, and add butter the size of a hen’s egg, heat the pan lid again hot enough to brown the dressing, and let it stew again an hour and a half.
When taken up, if the gravy is not thick enough, add a teaspoonful of flour wet up in cold water, then add a couple of glasses of white wine to the gravy, and a bit of butter as large as a walnut.
Make a stuffing of bread, and a quarter as much of salt pork, chopped fine and seasoned with sweet herbs, pepper and salt. Make deep gashes, or what is better, take out the bone with a carving knife, and fill up with stuffing, and sew up the opening with strong thread. When there is a flap of flesh, lap it over the opening and sew it down.
Put it into a large pot and fill it with water, putting in a tablespoonful of salt, and let it simmer slowly three hours. If it is needful to add water, pour in boiling water. When it is done take it up, and save the broth for next day’s dinner.
The best way to make the crust is as follows. Peel, boil, and mash a dozen potatoes, add a teaspoonful of salt, two great spoonfuls of butter, and half a cup of milk, or cream. Then stiffen it with flour, till you can roll it. Be sure to get all the lumps out of the potatoes. Some persons leave out the butter.
Some roll butter into the dough of bread, others make a raised biscuit with but little shortening, others make a plain pie crust. But none are so good and healthful as the potato crust.
To prepare the meat, first fry half a dozen slices of salt pork, and then cut up the meat and pork, and boil them in just water enough to cover them, till the meat is nearly cooked. Then peel a dozen potatoes, and slice them thin. Then roll the crust half an inch thick, and cut it into oblong pieces. Then put alternate layers of crust, potatoes, and meat, till all is used. The meat must have salt and pepper sprinkled over each layer. The top and bottom layer must be crust. Lastly, pour on the liquor in which the meat was boiled, until it just covers the whole, and let it simmer till the top crust is well cooked, say half or three quarters of an hour. If you have occasion to add more liquor, or water, it must be _boiling hot_, or the crust will be spoilt. The excellence of this pie depends on having light crust, and therefore the meat must first be nearly cooked before putting it in the pie, and the crust must be in only just long enough to cook, or it will be clammy and hard. When nearly done, the crust can be browned, with hot coals on a bake-lid. Great care is needed not to burn the crust, which should not be put where the fire reached the pot on the bottom.