The complete cook book

currant jelly or with bread sauce. Small birds may be baked in sweet potatoes, or if large cut in halves, using the breasr only. Cut the potatoes in halves lengthwise, make a cavity in each half, season the bird with salt, pepper, and butter; fit it into the potato, put the other half over it, and bake till the potatoes are soft. Remove the string, tie with a bright ribbon, and serve in the potatoes, garnished with parsley. An inviting dish to serve to an invalid. Small birds are also broiled or stewed. MOCK PHEASANT. It often happens that at a small hotel or restaurant there is sometimes only one pheasant in the house and an order for two is hard to fill, I therefore oflfer the following recipe as likely to prove acceptable to such as are in the predicament: Take a nice, plump young fowl, as near the size of the pheasant as , you possibly can. Let it be plucked with the head on, and very carefully draw it, and arrange it exactly like the pheasant; let the fowl and pheasant be larded exactly alike on the breast and legs. Put paper over the breast that it may not scorch up; roast them together in one pan side by side, baste them together with the same basting. If these directions are implicitly followed no one will detect the difference between the two birds. WOODCOCKS. The woodcock, if properly dressed, is a highly flavored and truly delicious bird. In choosing them let it be well understood that, however genuine they may be, woodcocks are good for nothing unless they are fat, and no dish looks so bad or has less flavor than the thin half-starved birds of this species which we find very often in the New York markets. There is more art in roasting woodcocks than any other bird of the same size. They require constant attention during the operation of roasting them, as they must be very little done. The flesh of the woodcock, like that of all dark-fleshed game, being digestible when almost raw, and losing its The Complete Cook Book. 83 flavor if roasted as long as a partridge, their cooking occupies but little time; therefore a cook should never leave the woodcock from the moment they reach the oven until they are done. The most delicate parts of the woodcock are the legs and tail, next the breast; the latter should be very much underdone, and the legs a little more. SALMIS OF WOODCOCK. Try the same recipe as for partridges and you will find it much superior to the ordinary salmis. SNIPES. Snipes should be treated like a woodcock. The peculiarity about them is, that they are to be found equally in the frozen regions of Siberia and the scorched plains of lower India. PLOVER. These birds are roasted without being drawn and are treated in all respects like the woodcock. Plover eggs are considered a great delicacy and found in great abundance. ENGLISH SNIPE— BROILED. Pick, singe, draw, and dry well six fine English snipe ; remove the skin from the heads, split them in two without detaching the parts, and put them on a dish. Season with a pinch of salt, half a pinch of pepper, and a tablespoonful of oil. Roll them in well, then put them to broil (with the bills stuck into the breasts), and let them cook for four minutes on each side. Prepare a hot dish with six toasts, arrange the snipe over, spread a gill of maitre d'hotel butter on top, decorate the dish with a little watercress, and serve. QUAILS. They are very common and found as plentiful in Europe as here. I never could find a fine flavor in this bird, which appears to me to have a greasy, tasteless 84 The Complete Cook Book. flesh, but nevertheless it is used by the million, both here and in Europe. To roast a quail, treat it the same as a partridge, but without being larded. Wild ducks should form the remaining portion of matter to be treated in this way. SILVY'S BROILED QUAIL.