Hand-Book of Practical Cookery, for Ladies and Professional Cooks: Containing the Whole Science and Art of Preparing Human Food

more pale than other beef; the fat is white. BULL BEEF. Bull beef is never good; you recognize it when you see hard and yellow fat; the lean part is of a dirty-reddish color. The rump piece is generally prepared _à la mode_. For steaks, the tenderloin and the piece called the porter-house steak, are the best; rump steaks are seldom tender. The roasting or baking pieces are the tenderloin, the fillet, and some cuts of the ribs. For soup, every piece is good; to make rich broth, take pieces of the rump, sucket, round, etc., but every piece makes excellent broth, and therefore excellent soup. (_See_ Broth.) A good piece of rib, prepared like a fillet or tenderloin, makes an excellent dish, the bones and meat around them being used to make broth. A LA MODE. Take from six to twelve pounds of rump and lard it. To lard it you take a steel needle made for that purpose, flat near the pointed end and much larger than an ordinary larding-needle. It must be flat near the point in order to cut the meat so as to make room for the larger part of the needle to pass, and also for the salt pork. This needle is only used for beef _à la mode_. Cut the salt pork in square strips to fit the needle, (_see_ Larding), and proceed. Examine the piece of beef, lard with the grain of the meat, so that when it is carved the salt pork shall be cut across. If the piece is too thick to run the strip of pork through, so that both ends stick out, lard one side first then the other. We mean by one side first, this: to be easily handled, the salt pork cannot be cut longer than about four inches; as half an inch of it must stick out of the meat, it leaves only three inches inside, and if the piece of meat be six inches or more thick, of course it would be impossible to have the strip of pork stick out on both sides;