Original White House Cookbook

A NICE dish for breakfast, and very relishing, can be made from the remains of a roast of duck. Cut the meat from the bones, pick out all the little tidbits in the recesses, lay them in a frying pan, and cover with water and the cold gravy left from the roast; add a piece of butter; let all boil up once and if not quite thick enough, stir in a little dissolved flour. Serve hot. ROAST WILD DUCK. Wild duck should not be dressed too soon after being killed. If the weather is cold it will be better for being kept several days. Bake in a hot oven, letting it remain for flve or ten minutes without basting to keep in the gravy, then baste frequently with butter and water. If over-done it loses flavor, thirty to forty minutes in the right kind of an oven being sufficient. Serve on a very hot dish, and send to table as hot as possible with a cut lemon and the following sauce : — Put in a tiny saucepan a tablespoonful each of Worcestershire sauce and mushroom catsup, a little salt and cayenne pepper and the juice of half a lemon. Mix well, make it hot, remove from the fire and stir in a teaspoonful of made mustard. Pour into a hot gravy boat, California Style, Lick House. WILD DUCKS. Most wild ducks are apt to have the flavor of fish, and when in the hands of inexperienced cooks are sometimes unpalatable on this account. Before roasting them, parboil them with a small peeled carrot put within each duck. This absorbs the unpleasant taste. An onion will have the same effect, but unless you use onions in the stuffing the carrot is preferable. Roast the same as tame duck. Or put into the duck a whole onion peeled, plenty of salt and pepper and a glass of claret, bake in a hot oven twenty minutes. Serve hot with the gravy it yields in cooking and a dish of currant jelly. CANVAS-BACK DUCK. The epicurean taste declares that this special kind of bird requires no spices or flavors to make it perfect, as the meat partakes of the flavor of the food that the bird feeds upon, being mostly wild celery ; and the delicious flavor is best preserved when roasted quickly with a hot fire. After [illustration: POULTRY AND GAME] dressing the duck in the usual way by plucking, singeing, drawing, wipe it with a wet towel, truss the head under the wing ; place it in a drippingpan, put it in the oven, basting often, and roast it half an hour. It is generally preferred a little underdone. Place it when done on a hot dish, season well with salt and pepper, pour over it the gravy it has yielded in baking and serve it immediately while hot. Delmonico, ROAST PIGEONS. Pigeons lose their flavor by being kept more than a day after they are killed. They may be prepared and roasted or broiled the same as chickens; they will require from twenty to thirty minutes' cooking. Make a gravy of the giblets or not, season it with pepper and salt, and add a little flour and butter. STEWED PIGEONS.