Culinary jottings

Pâte brisée crust, as used by French cooks for raised savoury pies, is composed by working the suet and butter into the dry flour before any liquid is added. Eight ounces of iced butter, or clarified beef suet, should be allowed for a pound of flour, a tea-spoonful of salt, and sufficient water to mix a very stiff dough. You can fill up these pies in many ways, here are a few recipes : — (a.) With mutton, a plain pie : — Choose a first class neck of mutton, cut the meat from the bones in one piece, divide that into slices an inch thick, and cut them into squares as for a dry curry, keeping the fat and lean separate : if the neck be a lean one, a few pieces of nice kidney fat from the loin may be taken to assist the pie : thoroughly season the meat, when it is cut up, with salt, black pepper, and a table-spoonful of chopped curled parsley, — nothing else upon any account. With this the pie should be packed, as closely as possible, in alternate layers of fat and lean. Unlike ordinary pies, in this case you must not pour in any gravy with the meat: the chief thing is the close arrangement of the meat : if put in loosely the outside pieces will be dry and leathery. When satisfactorily filled, put on the oval cover, cement the edges with white of egg, and pinch tliem together firmly, brush the top over with a well-beaten egg, and bake the pie in a slow oven. While baking, jon can simmer the bones and trimmings of the neck, with a couple of sheep's feet cleaned and cut up, and make a clear yet strong broth ; this, when cold, should solidify as jelly ; flavour it with pepper and salt, and after the pie has been baked, pour a little of it through an opening in the top of the cover. Set the pie in the icebox, and when quite cold, serve. (h.) With pork, when you can get it clean-fed as on the Hills, the process is similar to that just explained : choose the neck, and omit the parsley : the seasoning for pork pies is composed of black pepper and salt only, the proportion being two-thirds of the latter to one of the former. Receipts that mention sage, &c., are incorrect. Pack the pieces of meat as closely as you can, and bake the pie very slowly : a little liquid jelly made from pettitoes and pork scraps may be poured in after the baking, but no gravy should be added before that operation. (c.) With game. If made with game, the birds should be boned, and some pieces of chopped bacon should be introduced here and there. Season with spiced pepper, and pour some liquid jelly (made from the bones, trimmings, and a couple of sheep's feet) into the pie after it has been baked. A liver and bacon forcemeat (vide page 70) is also necessary. For a specially good game-pie, proceed as follows : — Bone two partridges, two quails, and four snipes, and cut out the back fillets of a good hare ; give the meat a dusting of spiced pepper, and cover it up. Next make a forcemeat as follows : — Take the livers of the birds and that of the hare, and mince them finely ; mince the spare meat of the hare, and a quarter of a pound of ham, and throw the whole of the mince into a frying-pan, in which