Marion Harland's Complete Cook Book: A Practical and Exhaustive Manual of Cookery and Housekeeping

a sliced carrot, an onion and a turnip, with minced sweet herbs. Add a cupful of cold water, cover closely and cook slowly twenty minutes to the pound. Cut one large carrot, two large onions, two turnips and four stalks of celery into neat dice and cook them soft, without breaking, in salted water, each in a pan of its own. In another saucepan cook four large tomatoes, peeled and whole. When the steak is done, keep hot over boiling water, while you rub the vegetables with which it was cooked through the colander or a vegetable press back into the gravy, thickening this with browned flour. Boil one minute, add the juice of a lemon and a glass of sherry, and keep hot in a closed vessel. Dish the meat, lay the vegetable dice about it in little heaps, each kind by itself, leaving the tomatoes whole; pour the rich gravy over all; cover the dish and leave in the open oven for three minutes to let the gravy soak in. You have now a “French dish,” that will amply repay the additional pains it has cost you. A family pot-roast of beef The round will serve for this dish. Fry slices of fat salt pork in an iron pot, and when crisp, remove and throw in a sliced onion. When this is browned, remove and lay the roast in the pot. Cook for ten minutes, turn and cook for five minutes more. Now, add a cupful of water, cover closely and simmer over a slow fire for an hour. Add a sliced carrot, two teaspoonfuls of lemon juice, a bay-leaf and a tablespoonful of Worcestershire sauce to the contents of the pot. Turn the beef over and over in this, and if the meat seem dry add a cupful of water, or, better still, stock. Cook covered, very slowly, for two hours more. Transfer the meat to a hot platter, thicken the gravy left in the pot with a brown roux, salt and pepper to taste, and stir in two tablespoonfuls of vinegar. Pour this sauce over the