Endeavour to avoid _over_-dressing roasts and boils, &c. and _over_-seasoning soups and sauces with salt, pepper, &c.; it is a fault which cannot be mended.
If your roasts, &c. are a little _under_-done, with the assistance of the stewpan, the gridiron, or the Dutch oven, you may soon rectify the mistake made with the spit or the pot.
If _over_-done, the best juices of the meat are evaporated; it will serve merely to distend the stomach, and if the sensation of hunger be removed, it is at the price of an indigestion.
The chief business of cookery is to render food easy of digestion, and to facilitate nutrition. This is most completely accomplished by plain cookery in perfection; i. e. neither _over_ nor _under_-done.
With all your care, you will not get much credit by cooking to perfection, if more than _one dish goes to table at a time_.
To be eaten in perfection, the interval between meat being taken out of the stewpan and its being put into the mouth, must be as short as possible; but ceremony, that most formidable enemy to good cheer, too often decrees it otherwise, and the guests seldom get a bit of an "_entremets_" till it is half cold. (See No. 485.)
So much time is often lost in placing every thing in apple-pie order, that long before dinner is announced, all becomes lukewarm; and to complete the mortification of the _grand gourmand_, his meat is put on a sheet of ice in the shape of a plate, which instantly converts the gravy into jelly, and the fat into a something which puzzles his teeth and the roof of his mouth as much as if he had birdlime to masticate. A complete _meat-screen_ will answer the purpose of a _hot closet_, _plate-warmer_, &c.--See Index.
It will save you infinite trouble and anxiety, if you can prevail on your employers to use the "SAUCE-BOX," No. 462, hereinafter described in the chapter of Sauces. With the help of this "MAGAZINE OF TASTE," every one in company may flavour their soup and sauce, and adjust the vibrations of their palate, exactly to their own fancy; but if the cook give a decidedly predominant and _piquante goût_ to a dish, to tickle the tongues of two or three visiters, whose taste she knows, she may thereby make the dinner disgusting to all the other guests.