A guide to modern cookery

&c. In the first stage of their preparation, the meats are cut up small and fried like those of the sautés; in the second, slow cooking with sauce or garnish makes them akin to braised meats. =3. Roasts, Grills, Fryings.= =Roasts.= Of the two usual methods of roasting, the spit will always be used in preference to the oven, if only on account of the conditions under which the operation is effected, and whatever be the kind of fuel used—wood, coal, or gas. The reason of this preference is clear if it be remembered that, in spite of every possible precaution during the progress of an oven roast, it is impossible to avoid an accumulation of vapour around the cooking object in a closed oven. And this steam is more particularly objectionable inasmuch as it is excessive in the case of delicately flavoured meats, which latter are almost if not entirely impaired thereby. The spitted roast, on the contrary, cooks in the open in a dry atmosphere, and by this means retains its own peculiar flavour. Hence the unquestionable superiority of spitted roasts over the oven kind, especially in respect of small feathered game. In certain circumstances and places there is no choice of means, and, _nolens volens_, the oven has to be used; but, in this case at least, all possible precautions should be observed in order to counteract the effects of the steam above mentioned. 252—LARDING BACON FOR ROASTS Poultry and game to be roasted ought generally to be partly covered with a large thin slice of larding bacon, except those pieces of game which in special cases are larded. The object and use of these slices are not only to shield the fillets of fowl and game from the severe heat of the fires but also to prevent these from drying while the legs, which the heat takes much longer to penetrate than the other parts, are cooking. The slices of bacon should therefore completely cover the breasts of fowl and game, and they should be tied on to the latter by means of string. In some