Culinary jottings

made your mince and flavoured it with a little chopped olive, anchovy, sausage meat, &c., bind it with a little good sauce thickened with a couple of eggs, and let it get cold : make a good sized thin pan-cake, take it from the pan when almost done, put -it on a dish, and arrange some slices of cold cooked bacon upon it, lay the mince upon the bacon, give it a dust of spiced pepper, and fold the pan-cake over it : brush it over with an egg, bread-crumb it, and bake it a golden brown in your oven. The pancake should be just large enough to envelope the mince in one fold securely. If you look upon a tin of preserved meat as a dish that has been cooked once, and has accordingly to be dressed en rechauffe, you will not fail to turn it to good account. But warmed up as it comes from the tin, unaided, and carelessly dished, it presents an irregular mass of sodden and tasteless diet which few would care to touch unless driven to do so by the calls of ungovernable hunger. Messes like Messrs. Crosse and Blackwell's " ducks and green peas," " Irish stew," " ox cheek and vegetables," &c., should be avoided carefully, but if you find that your butler has sent such things to camp, you must pick the meat out of its surroundings, dress it with some fresh chicken meat, as a rissole, croustade or a mince, and cook the gravy and vegetables with some fresh chicken broth as a sauce. I have already spoken of tinned vegetables, (pages 163 to 165) and also of the produce of the country. The traveller ought to try and find out what country garden stuff can be got from the villages near his camp. The recipes I have given will be found easy, and the monotony of tinned food will be much relieved by an occasional nicely dressed dish of common vegetables. I will conclude this chapter with three very reliable recipes for cooking a hare. If you have shot the hare yourself so much the better, for then you will not find its heart, liver and kidneys gone. Skin, clean, and wash the animal well, saving the three parts I have mentioned carefully, and the hlood. When quite clean, wipe the carcass inside and out, and let it soak in the marinade mentioned at page 65 all day, turning it every now and then. As the hour for cooking approaches, fill the hare with a wellmade stuffing as for turkey (page 108). The kidneys and heart should be minced, and fried in fat bacon, with a little onion ; when done, the contents of the pan should be poured into a bowl to cool, and when cold, pounded to a paste, and mixed with the stuffing. The back of the hare should be larded, or covered with thin slices of bacon pinned down with little skewers, it should then be roasted, a constant basting of melted butter or clarified beef suet being kept up throughout the process. When nearly done, the bacon strips should be removed, and the back lightly dredged with flour ; the skin should be allowed to brown, and run into crisp blisters : the hare should then be served, — with a sauce made as follows : —