Farming for Self-Sufficiency

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Remove the caul fat (the membrane to which the guts are attached). Empty the bladder (not over the meat!), split the buttock so that the bung, or arse-hole, can fall out, and tie the latter off (that means tie it with a piece of string so nothing can come out of it).

Saw through the breast bone (sternum) from the neck backwards. If you don't do this now, with the beast lying on the ground, you'll never do it later, for the guts will hang down and prevent you from doing it, and the guts can't come out until you have done it.

Insert the gamble and hoist the beast half off the ground.

Get the skin off the hind quarters and off the tail.

Hoist right up and the innards will fall right out.

Remove the liver carefully. Excise the gall bladder from it.

Cut the diaphragm away.

Haul out pluck (heart and lungs). Clean out chest cavity of odd bits and pieces.

Finish flaying. Haul the hide right off.

Split the carcase in two. (I would do this next day, but my friend didn't say so.)

Trim out all blood vessels, etc. Wipe it all down inside with a clean, warm, moist cloth.

You should treat the intestines as I recommended for pig's small intestines and salt down for big sausage casings (see MOTHER NO. 29).

There are four stomachs:

1. The rumen, or paunch, which is enormous. Open and clean it in a running brook, take it home, scald it with boiling water, scrape inside, put in brine for a few days. When you want it boil it and coot it in clean brine. Cut it up and cook it as you desire. Tripe, well seasoned and piping hot, is a dish very much too good for a king.

2. The reticulum, or honeycomb stomach. Do as above, and it is fine for Tripe Normandy, but this is not a cookery book.

3. The omasum, or 'Bible-bag'. Good only for the pigs.

4. The abomasum, or reed. Where, in a young calf, the rennet comes from. Open and wash and it is good for tripe. Or the dogs?

The hooves should be scalded, when you can pull the hard hooves off leaving 'cow heels'. These make 'calves-foot jelly', or are marvellous in brawn.

The suet, which is the dry crumbly fat inside the belly, should be kept for puddings, mincemeat, etc. All ordinary fat surplus to requirements as part of a joint can be rendered down for dripping.

Now we have the weighty job of jointing our beef. Here I would strongly advise you to get a butcher to help you, at least the first time that you cut up a steer. Get him to do it slowly, and label, whatever you do, the joints that he cuts out of it. I am not going to describe the indescribable: that is how to joint a side of beef. It cannot be conveyed in words. It cannot be conveyed in pictures either, for you are trying to depict a three-dimensional matter of great complexity on a two-dimensional piece of paper. See the drawing, however, and here—very important—is a list of what the various cuts should be used for:

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