La Patronne Ne Mange Pas Ici

From Dressed Game and Poultry, by Mrs. Harriet deSalis, 1888.

Blackbird Pie. Stuff the birds with the crumb of a French roll soaked in a little milk, which put in a stewpan with 1-1/2 ounces of butter, a chopped shalot, some parsley, pepper, salt, a grate of nutmeg, and the yolks of two small eggs. Stir over the fire till it becomes a thick paste, and fill the insides of the birds with it. Line the bottom of the pie-dish with fried collops of rump steak, and place the birds on them neatly. Add four hard-boiled yolks of eggs, and pour gravy all over, cover with puff paste, and bake for one hour and a quarter.

Hare Cutlets A La Chef. Take a freshly-killed hare, save the blood, paunch and skin it. Roast it, then cut off the fillets and cut them aslant and flatten them. Put the bones of the hare into a saucepan with two onions sliced, one good-sized carrot, a tiny piece of garlic, two cloves, and a bouquet garni, and one bayleaf. Moisten with a glass of white wine, and let all this steep and stew for an hour; then pass through a sieve, add a quarter of a boiled Spanish onion, and thicken with the blood of the hare. Make some hare stuffing, and moisten with some of the sauce, and make it into cutlets. To form cutlets similar to the fillet cutlets, place them in a frying-pan, and let them poach in water. Place the hare fillets and the stuffing cutlets in the pan and fry to a good colour in clarified butter. Put a small[Pg 24] piece of the small bones of the hare in every cutlet and dish them in a crown. Fill the centre with a mixture of small onions, mushrooms, and small pieces of bacon, cut into dice which have been stewed in some of the sauce. Hand red currant jelly with this dish.

Croustade of Larks. Bone two dozen larks, season, and put into each a piece of pâté de foie gras (truffled). Roll the larks up into a ball, put them in a pudding basin, season them with salt and pepper, and pour three ounces of clarified butter over them, and bake in a hot oven for a quarter of an hour. Dish them in a fried bread croustade, made by cutting the crust from a stale loaf about eight inches long, which must be scooped out in the centre and fried in hot lard or butter till it is a good brown. Drain it, and then place it in the centre of a dish, sticking it there with a little white of egg. Put it into the oven to get hot; then put the larks into it, and let it get cold. Garnish with truffles and aspic jelly

Pheasant Cutlets. Take a well-hung young pheasant, cut it when prepared into neat joints. Take out the bones carefully and shape the joints into cutlets; flatten these with the cutlet-bat, season rather highly and cover them thickly with egg and finely-grated breadcrumbs. Put the bones and trimmings into a saucepan with a carrot, a turnip, an onion, a handful of parsley, a bouquet garni, a bayleaf, pepper, salt, and as much water as will cover them. Let them stew slowly till the flavour of the herbs is drawn out, then thicken gravy and strain. Fry the cutlets in hot fat till a bright brown. Serve on a hot dish in a circle with one of the small bones stuck into each cutlet; pour the gravy round.

The entire cookbook may be read online at Project Gutenberg.