Cooking Meats, page 31

Hints about cooking meat. All meat should be put to boil, with boiling water, unless intended for soup, then use cold water. It is also important to keep the water always boiling, otherwise the meat will absorb it. The more gently meat boils the more tender it will be. Always add boiling water if more is necessary and skim when the scum first rises. Allow about twenty minutes to the pound for boiling fresh meat and from one-half to three-quarters of an hour for salt meat, except ham which will cook in fifteen minutets {sic}. In roasting meats it is necessary to have a hot oven; to be tender is {sic} should be basted often; twenty minutes to the pound is required for all meats except beef which requires from fifteen to eighteen. A scant teaspoon of sugar added to meat gravy imparts a delicious flavor, that can not be obtained in any other way.

Mt. Vernon Cook Book, Second Edition, 1908, Thompson Company Printers, Carthage, Mo.