The Young Housekeeper's Friend

While searching for the small catechism book, I came across another find - The Young Housekeeper's Friend, copyright 1859, by Mrs. Cornelius. I meant to post about it when Gary and I found the old books. But now I remembered, so here you go.

Gary started paging through it and found these instructions.

"To roast a pig:
It should not be more than a month old. It is better a little less, and it should be killed on the morning of the day it is to be cooked. Sprinkle fine salt over it an hour before it is put to the fire. Cut off the feet at the first joint. Make stuffing enough to fill it very full, of bread crumbs moistened with a little milk, a small piece of butter, sweet marjoram, sage, pepper, and salt. When placed on the spit, confine the legs in such a manner as to give it a good shape. Rub it all over with butter or sweet oil, to keep it from blistering. Flour it at first a little. As soon as it begins to brown, dredge on a very thick covering of flour. Turn the spit every three of four minutes. If the flour falls off, instantly renew it. When it has all become of a dark brown color, scrape it off onto a plate and set it aside. Put a piece of butter into the gravy in the roaster, and baste the pig very often, till it is done, which it is when the eyes fall out. The feet and the liver should be boiled an hour or two, and the gravy from the roaster be poured into the water in which they were boiled. The liver should be cut or mashed fine, and the feet cut open and returned to the sauce-pan, the brains taken out and added, and the gravy thickened with the browned flour reserved in the plate. A pig of a month old will roast in two hours and a half."

We think the best part is how to tell when it's done - when the eyes fall out. Matt and Claire, you have some piggies, you should try this.