A good cook is as anxiously attentive to the appearance and colour of her roasts, as a court beauty is to her complexion at a birthday ball. If your meat does not brown so much, or so evenly as you wish, take two ounces of Glaze, _i. e._ portable soup, put four table-spoonfuls of water, and let it warm and dissolve gradually by the side of the fire. This will be done in about a quarter of an hour; put it on the meat equally all over with a paste-brush the last thing before it goes to table.
Though roasting is one of the most common, and is generally considered one of the most easy and simple processes of cookery, it requires more unremitting attention to perform it perfectly well than it does to make most made-dishes.
That made-dishes are the most difficult preparations, deserves to be reckoned among the culinary vulgar errors; in plain roasting and boiling it is not easy to repair a mistake once made; and all the discretion and attention of a steady, careful cook, must be unremittingly upon the alert.[78-+]
A diligent attention to time, the distance of the meat from, and judicious management of, the fire, and frequent bastings,[79-*] are all the general rules we can prescribe. We shall deliver particular rules for particular things, as the several articles occur, and do our utmost endeavours to instruct our reader as completely as words can describe the process, and teach
"The management of common things so well, That what was thought the meanest shall excel: That cook's to British palates most complete, Whose sav'ry skill gives zest to common meat: For what are soups, your ragoûts, and your sauce, Compared to the fare of OLD ENGLAND, And OLD ENGLISH ROAST BEEF!"
* TAKE NOTICE, _that the_ TIME _given in the following receipts is calculated for those who like meat thoroughly roasted._ (_See N.B. preceding No. 19._)
Some good housewives order very large joints to be rather under-done, as they then make a better hash or broil.
N.B. _Roasts_ must not be put on, till the _soup_ and _fish_ are taken off the table.
2. Sweet herbs dried and powdered, and mixed with grated bread.
3. Lemon-peel dried and pounded, or orange-peel, mixed with flour.
4. Sugar finely powdered, and mixed with pounded cinnamon, and flour or grated bread.