Draw and pick four pigeons immediately after they are killed, and let them be cooked soon, as they do not keep well. Wash the inside very clean, and wipe it dry. Stuff them with a mixture of parsley parboiled and chopped, grated bread-crumbs, and butter; seasoned with pepper, salt, and nutmeg. Dredge them with flour, and roast them before a good fire, basting them with butter. They will be done in about twenty-five or thirty minutes. Serve them up with parsley-sauce. Lay the pigeons on the dish in a row. If asparagus is in season, it will be much better than parsley both for the stuffing and sauce. It must first be boiled. Chop the green heads for the stuffing, and cut them in two for the melted butter. Have cranberry-sauce on the table. Pigeons may be split and broiled, like chickens; also stewed or fricasseed. They are very good stewed with slices of cold ham and green peas, serving up all in the same dish.
With roast beef: tomato sauce, grated horse-radish, mustard, cranberry sauce, pickles. With roast pork: apple sauce, cranberry sauce. With roast veal: tomato sauce, mushroom sauce, onion sauce and cranberry sauce. Horse-radish and lemons are good. With roast mutton: currant jelly, caper sauce. With boiled mutton: onion sauce, caper sauce. With boiled fowls: bread sauce, onion sauce, lemon sauce, cranberry sauce, jellies. Also cream sauce. With roast lamb: mint sauce. With roast turkey: cranberry sauce, currant jelly. With boiled turkey: oyster sauce. With venison or wild ducks: cranberry sauce, currant jelly, or currant jelly warmed with port wine. With roast goose: apple sauce, cranberry sauce, grape or currant jelly. With boiled fresh mackerel: stewed gooseberries. With boiled blue fish: white cream sauce, lemon sauce. With broiled shad: mushroom sauce, parsley or egg sauce. With fresh salmon: green peas, cream sauce. Pickles are good with all roast meats, and in fact are suitable accompaniments to all kinds of meats in general. Spinach is the proper accompaniment to veal; green peas to lamb. Lemon juice makes a very grateful addition to nearly all the insipid members of the fish kingdom. Slices of lemon cut into very small dice and stirred into drawn butter and allowed to come to the boiling point, served with fowls, is a fine accompaniment.
Pour boiling water on a pint of bread crumbs; melt a tablespoonful of butter and stir in. When the bread is softened, add two eggs and beat thoroughly with the bread. Then put in a pint of the stewed fruit and sweeten to your taste. Fresh fruit of many kinds can be used instead of cranberries. Slices of peaches put in layers are delicious. Serve with sweet sugar sauce.
Begin your preparations by making the stuffing. Take a sufficient quantity of grated stale bread, and mix it with sage and sweet marjoram rubbed fine or powdered; also some grated lemon-peel. Season it with pepper, salt, powdered nutmeg and mace; mix in butter enough to moisten it, and some beaten yolk of egg to bind it. Let the whole be very well incorporated. The pig should be newly killed, (that morning if possible,) nicely cleaned, fat, and not too large. Wash it well in cold water, and cut off the feet close to the joints, leaving some skin all round to fold over the ends. Take out the liver and heart, and reserve them, with the feet, to make the gravy. Truss back the legs. Fill the body with the stuffing (it must be quite full) and then sew it up, or tie it round with a buttered twine. Put the pig on the spit, and place it before a clear brisk fire, but not too near lest it scorch. The fire should be largest at the ends, that the middle of the pig may not be done before the extremities. If you find the heat too great in the centre, you may diminish it by placing a flat-iron before the fire. When you first put it down, wash the pig all over with salt and water; afterwards rub it frequently with a feather dipped in sweet oil, or with fresh butter tied in a rag. If you baste it with any thing else, or with its own dripping, the skin will not be crisp. Take care not to blister or burn the outside by keeping it too near the fire. A good sized pig will require at least three hours' roasting. Unless a pig is very small it is seldom sent to table whole. Take the spit from the fire, and place it across a large dish: then, having cut off the head with a sharp knife, and cut down the back, slip the spit out. Lay the two halves of the body close together in the dish, and place half the head on each side. Garnish with sliced lemon. For the gravy,--take, that from the dripping-pan and skim it well. Having boiled the heart, liver, and feet, with some minced sage in a very little water, cut the meat from the feet, and chop it. Chop also the liver and heart. Put all into a small sauce-pan, adding a little of the water that they were boiled in, and some bits of butter rolled in flour. Flavour it with a glass of Madeira, and some grated nutmeg. Give it a boil up, and send it to table in a gravy-boat. You may serve up with the pig, apple-sauce, cranberry sauce, or bread-sauce in a small tureen; or currant jelly. If you bake the pig instead of roasting it, rub it from time to time with fresh butter tied in a rag.
Cut cold chicken or turkey into very thin slices, and stand over hot water, in a dish, until heated; toast a sufficient quantity of bread, butter the slices, put on each a slice of chicken or turkey, dust lightly with salt and pepper. On top of these place a poached egg, cover with tarragon sauce, and send to the table.
Chop half a head of celery very fine. Mix with it one quart of bread crumbs, two scant table-spoonfuls of salt, half a teaspoonful of pepper, two heaping table-spoonfuls of butter and two eggs. Stuff the turkey with this; sew up and truss. Wring a large square of white cotton cloth out of cold water, and dredge it thickly with flour. Pin the turkey in this, and plunge into boiling water. Let it boil rapidly for fifteen minutes; then set back where it will simmer. Allow three hours for a turkey weighing nine pounds, and twelve minutes for every additional pound. Serve with celery sauce. The stuffing may be made the same as above, only substitute oysters for celery, and serve with oyster sauce.
Soak a small loaf of bread; press out every drop of water, work into this one cup of suet shaved very fine, the yolks of six eggs, one cup of currants, one cup of raisins seeded, one-half cup of citron shredded fine, three-quarters cup of syrup, one wineglass of brandy, one cup of sifted flour and the stiffly-beaten whites of eggs last. Boil four hours in greased melon mold.
Make a force-meat of grated bread-crumbs, minced suet, sweet marjoram, grated lemon-peel, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and beaten yolk of egg. You may add some grated cold ham. Light some writing paper, and singe the hairs from the skin of the turkey. Reserve the neck, liver, and gizzard for the gravy. Stuff the craw of the turkey with the force-meat, of which there should be enough made to form into balls for frying, laying them round the turkey when it is dished. Dredge it with flour, and roast it before a clear brisk fire, basting it with cold lard. Towards the last, set the turkey nearer to the fire, dredge it again very lightly with flour, and baste it with butter. It will require, according to its size, from two to three hours roasting. Make the gravy of the giblets cut in pieces, seasoned, and stewed for two hours in a very little water; thicken it with a spoonful of browned flour, and stir into it the gravy from the dripping-pan, having first skimmed off the fat. A turkey should be accompanied by ham or tongue. Serve up with it mushroom-sauce. Have stewed cranberries on the table to eat with it. Do not help any one to the legs, or drum-sticks as they are called. Turkeys are sometimes stuffed entirely with sausage-meat. Small cakes of this meat should then be fried, and laid round it. To bone a turkey, you must begin with a very sharp knife at the top of the wings, and scrape the flesh loose from the bone without dividing or cutting it to pieces. If done carefully and dexterously, the whole mass of flesh may be separated from the bone, so that you can take hold of the head and draw out the entire skeleton at once. A large quantity of force-meat having been prepared, stuff it hard into the turkey, restoring it by doing so to its natural form, filling out the body, breast, wings and legs, so as to resemble their original shape when the bones were in. Roast or bake it; pouring a glass of port wine into the gravy. A boned turkey is frequently served up cold, covered with lumps of currant jelly; slices of which are laid round the dish. Any sort of poultry or game may be boned and stuffed in the same manner, A cold turkey that has not been boned is sometimes sent to table larded all over the breast with slips of fat bacon, drawn through the flesh with a larding needle, and arranged in regular form.
Pieces of cold turkey or chicken may be warmed up with a little butter in a frying pan; place it on a warm platter, surround it with pieces of small thick slices of bread or biscuit halved, first dipping them in hot salted water; then place the platter in a warm oven with the door open. Have already made the following gravy to pour over all:-- Into the frying pan put a large spoonful of butter, one or two cupfuls of milk, and any gravy that may be left over. Bring it to a boil; then add sufficient flour, wet in a little cold milk or water, to make it the consistency of cream. Season with salt, pepper and add a little of the dark meat chopped very fine. Let the sauce cook a few moments, then pour over the biscuit and fowl. This will be found a really nice dish.
Take twenty-five large fine oysters, and chop them. Mix with them half a pint of grated bread-crumbs, half a handful of chopped parsley, a quarter of a pound of butter, two table-spoonfuls, of cream or rich milk, and the beaten yolks of three eggs. When it is thoroughly mixed, stuff the craw of the turkey with it, and sew up the skin. Then dredge it with flour, put it into a large pot or kettle, and cover it well with cold water. Place it over the fire, and let it boil slowly for half an hour, taking off the scum as it rises. Then remove the pot from over the fire, and set it on hot coals to stew slowly for two hours, or two hours and a half, according to its size, Just before you send it to table, place it again over the fire to get well heated. When you boil a turkey, skewer the liver and gizzard to the sides, under the wings. Send it to table with oyster-sauce in a small tureen. In making the stuffing, you may substitute for the grated bread, chestnuts boiled, peeled, and minced or mashed. Serve up chestnut- sauce, made by peeling some boiled chestnuts and putting them whole into melted butter, Some persons, to make them white, boil their turkeys tied up in a large cloth sprinkled with flour. With a turkey, there should be on the table a ham, or a smoked tongue.
