The "Queen" cookery books: Entrees

Filets de Sanglier d la Frederic le grand. — Trim a fillet of wild boar neatly, and place it in a pan lined with sliced bacon, a slice of lean ham, two carrots, two onions stuck with cloves, two bayleaves, a good bouquet, salt, pepper, peppercorns, and two good glasses of light white wine, covering it all with sliced fat bacon and a buttered paper; braize it gently for two hours in the oven, with heat above and below, and serve sliced rather thickly, with its own liquor carefully skimmed, strained, and reduced. Lean pork thoroughly steeped in cooked marinade is excellent thus. In a book of the present size it is manifestly impossible to give anything like an exhaustive list of the methods of preparing cutlets and fillets, but the above will help towards giving a general idea of the way such things may be utilised by even the most economical and the plainest cook, who is willing to take a little trouble, to the making of her own reputation, the benefit of her mistress’s pocket, and the improvement of the British cuisine. To conclude this chapter, a recipe or two for hare and rabbit fillets may be given. For escalopes de lievre aux cerises : Remove the fillet on both sides of the backbone of a nice hare, and wrap it in buttered paper till wanted ; meantime remove all the flesh from the rest of the hare, and break up the bones ; put these in a pan with a carrot and turnip, two onions (one stuck with two or three cloves), and a good bunch of herbs, together with a strip or two of celery if handy, and cover this all with common stock or water and bring it to the boil, skimming it, and then allowing it to simmer gently but steadily till you have about one and a half pints of stock ; have ready some thick veloute sauce made with half a pint of the hare stock, and loz. each of flour and butter, cooked together to a smooth paste and then diluted with the stock, letting this reduce till fully as thick as thick melted butter ; season to taste with pepper and salt, adding, if liked, a few sliced truffles to the mixture as you stir in the minced flesh of the hare (using two parts hare to one of the sauce), fill a buttered mould with the mixture and poach or steam it. Meanwhile cook the fillets of the hare, previously sliced down and batted out neatly, in butter, wine, and stock, in the usual way under a buttered paper in the oven. Get ready the sauce by pouring what you have left of the stock on to a couple of ounces or so of brown roux, letting this cook together for about ten minutes till slightly reduced and thickened, then wring it through a tammy or a fine hair sieve, and re-heat in the bain-marie, adding to it half a gill of port wine, a tablespoon ful of red currant jelly, and some dried cherries (allowing three or four for each fillet), with a seasoning of salt and coralline pepper; let this all simmer together till the jelly is perfectly dissolved and the cherries are hot, then turn out the border mould, dish the hare fillets neatly on this, and fill up the centre with nicely cooked French beans, or mushrooms, or any nice garnish to taste, and pour the sauce, cherries and all, round, and serve very hot.