Required: Two pounds of beef skirt or stewing steak. One carrot, turnip, and onion. Two sticks of celery. Bunch of herbs. Parsley. Four allspice. One ounce of flour.

One and a half ounces of beef dripping. One pint of water or stock. Salt and pepper.

(Sufficient for six persons.)

Prepare the vegetables and cut them into neat pieces, chopping the onion finely. Remove any skin from the beef, and cut it into large blocks. Melt the dripping in a frying-pan, put in the meat and brown it quickly on each side. Transfer it to a casserole, then put in the chopped onion and fry it a good brown, but not black, as this gives the stew a bitter flavour. Add the onion and dripping from the pan to the casserole, also the remaining vegetables, parsley, herbs, and allspice. Pour over the stock or water, add a little salt, cover the pan tightly, and let its contents cook slowly in the oven for one and a half hours.

In the meantime, melt the rest of the dripping in the frying-pan, add the flour and brown it carefully. Pour in gradually a little of the hot stock from the casserole, stirring the same well, or it becomes lumpy. When smoothly and thinly mixed, pour the now thickened gravy into the casserole again. Remove herbs and allspice, season carefully, and re-heat for half an hour. Then serve the stew in the casserole with a clean table napkin neatly pinned round the outside. Well-boiled rice or haricot beans are much liked with this dish.

Cost about Is. Id.