Pigeon Pie.
Clean as before: season; and, if approved, put some parsley into the birds, and a bit of butter, with pepper and salt. Lay a beefsteak at the bottom of the dish, and hard eggs between each two birds, and a little water. If you have ham in the house, lay a slice on each: it is a great improvement to the flavour.
Observe, when you cut ham for sauce or pies, to turn it, and take from the underside instead of the prime.
Broiled Pigeons.
Slit them down the back: season, and broil. Serve with mushroom sauce; or melted butter, with a little mushroom catsup.
Roast Pigeons.
Should be stuffed with uncut parsley, seasoned; and served with parsley and butter. Asparagus, or peas, should be dressed to eat with them.
Parsley Pie.
Lay veal or fowl at the bottom of a pie dish, seasoned. Take a colander full of picked parsley, cover the meat with it, and pour some cream into the dish, and a spoonful or two of broth. Cover with crust.
Potatoe Pasty.
Boil, peel, and mash potatoes as fine as possible; then mix pepper, salt, and a little thick cream, or, if you prefer it, butter. Make a paste, and, rolling it out like a large puff, put the potatoe into it, and bake it.
Turnip Pie.
Season mutton chops with pepper and salt: lay them in the bottom of a dish, reserving the ends of the bones to lay over the turnips; which cut and season, and lay over the steaks till the dish be full. Put two or three spoonfuls of water in, and cover with crust. You may add a little onion.
Shrimp Pie. Excellent.
Take a quart of picked shrimps: if very salt, only season with mace, and a clove or two in fine powder; but if not salt, mince two or three anchovies, mix with the spice, and season them. Put some butter at the bottom of the dish, and over the shrimps, and a glass of sharp white wine. Put a good light paste over. They do not require long baking.
Cornish Pies.
Scald and blanch some broad beans: cut mushrooms, carrots, turnips, and artichoke bottoms, and with some peas, and a little onion, make the whole into a nice stew, with some good veal gravy. Bake a crust over a dish, with a little lining round the edge, and a cup within to keep it from sinking: open the lid, and put in the fricassee made hot; seasoning to your taste. Shalots, parsley, lettuce, celery, or any sort of vegetables that you like, may be added.
Fish Pie.
Put slices of cod that have been salted a night; pepper, and between each layer put a good quantity of parsley picked from the stalks, and some fresh butter. Pour a little broth, if you have any, or else a little water. Bake the pie; and when to be served, add a quarter of a pint of raw cream warm, with half a teaspoonful of flour. Oysters may be added.
Mackerel will do well; but do not salt it till used.
Soals, with oysters, seasoned with pounded mace, nutmeg, pepper, an anchovy, and some salt, make an excellent pie. Put in the oyster liquor, two or three spoonfuls of broth, and some butter, for gravy. When come from the oven, pour in a cup of thick cream.
To prepare Meat or Fowls for raised Pies.
When washed, put a good seasoning of spices and salt. Set it over a fire in a stewpan, that will just hold the meat: put a piece of butter, and, covering close, let it simmer in its own steam till it shrink. It must be cool before it be put into the pie. Chicken’s sweetbreads, giblets, pigeon’s meat, almost any thing will make a good pie, if well seasoned, and made tender by stewing. A forcemeat may be put under and over, of cold chicken or veal, fat bacon, shred ham, herbs, bread, and seasoning, bound with an egg or two, or in balls. Or instead of crust, use an earthen pie form.
Hares,
If old, should be larded with bacon, after having hung as long as they will keep, and being first soaked in pepper and vinegar.
If not paunched as soon as killed, hares are more juicy: but as that is usually done in the field, the cook must be careful to wipe it dry every day; the liver being removed, and boiled to keep for the stuffing.
Parsley put into the belly will help keep it fresh.
When to be dressed, the hare must be well soaked; and if the neck and shoulders are bloody, in warm water: then dry it, and put to it a large fine stuffing, made of the liver, an anchovy, some fat bacon, a little suet, herbs, spice, and bread crumbs, with an egg to bind it. Sew it up. Observe that the ears are nicely cleaned and singed. When half roasted, cut the skin off the neck to let out the blood, which afterwards fixes there. Baste with milk till three parts done, then with butter: and before served, froth it up with flour. It should be put down early, kept at a great distance at first from the fire, and drawn nearer by degrees.
Send a rich brown gravy in the dish; melted butter in one boat, and currantjelly in another.
To jug an old Hare.
After it is well cleaned and skinned, cut it up and season it with pepper, allspice, salt, pounded, mace, and a little nutmeg: put it into a jar, with an onion, a clove or two, a bunch of sweet herbs, and over all a bit of coarse beef. Tie it down with a bladder and leather quite close, and put the jar into a saucepan of water up to its neck, but no higher. Let the water boil gently five hours. When to be served, pour the gravy into a saucepan, and thicken it with butter and flour; or if become cold, warm the hare with the gravy.
Hare Soup. See Soups.
Hare Pie.
Season the hare after it is cut up. Put eggs, and forcemeat, and either bake in a raised crust or a dish: if in the former, put cold jelly gravy to it; if for the latter, the same hot; but the pie is to be eaten cold. See Jelly Gravy among similar articles.
Potted Hare.
Having seasoned, and baked it with butter over, cover it with brown paper, and let it grow cold. Then take the meat from the bones, beat it in a mortar, and add salt, mace, and pepper, if not high enough; a bit of fresh butter melted, and a spoonful of the gravy that came from the hare when baked. Put the meat into small pots, and cover it well with butter warmed. The prime should be baked at the bottom of the pot.
Broiled Hare and hashed.
The flavour of broiled hare is particularly fine. The legs or wings peppered and salted first, and when done, rubbed with cold butter.
The other parts warmed with the gravy and a little stuffing.
Rabbits
May be eaten various ways.
Roasted with stuffing and gravy.
Ditto without stuffing; and with liver, parsley, and butter: seasoned with pepper and salt.
Boiled, and smothered with onion sauce; the butter being melted with milk instead of water.
Fried, and served with dried or fried parsley, and liver sauce as above.
Fricasseed, as directed for chickens.
Made into Pies, as chickens, with forcemeat, &c. are excellent, when young.
To make Rabbit taste much like Hare.
Choose a young full grown one: hang it, with the skin on, two or three days: skin, and lay it unwashed in a seasoning of black and Jamaica peppers, in fine powder, putting some port wine into the dish, and baste it occasionally for forty hours: then stuff and roast it as hare, and with the same sauce. Do not wash off the liquor that it lay in.
Potted Rabbit.
Cut up and season three or four after washing them. The seasoning must be mace, pepper, salt, a little Cayenne, and a few pimentos in finest powder. Pack them as close as possible in a small pan, and make the surface smooth. Keep out the carcasses, having taken all the meat off them, and, putting a good deal of butter over the rabbits, bake them gently. Let them remain a day or two, then remove into potting pans; and add some fresh butter to that which already covers them.