The legs and wings of fowl, turkey, pheasant, partridge, or moor-hen should only be used. Have these scored across with a sharp knife, and divided at the joints. And when your grill is taken, “hot as hot,” but not burnt, from the fire, have poured over it the following sauce. Be very particular that your cook pours it over the grill just before it is served up. And it is of the most vital importance that the sauce should be made, and well mixed, on a plate over hot water—for instance, a slop-basin should be filled with boiling water and a plate placed atop.
Melt on the plate a lump of butter the size of a large walnut. Stir into it, when melted, two teaspoonfuls of made mustard, then a dessert-spoonful of vinegar, half that quantity of tarragon vinegar, and a tablespoonful of cream—Devonshire or English. Season with salt, black pepper, and cayenne, according to the (presumed) tastes and requirements of the breakfasters.
Let your sideboard—it is assumed that you have a sideboard—sigh and lament its hard lot, under its load of cold joints, game, and pies,—I am still harping on the country-house; and if you have a York ham in cut, it should be flanked by a Westphalian ditto. For the blend is a good one. And remember that no York ham under 20 lb. in weight is worth cutting. You need not put it all on the board at once. A capital adjunct to the breakfast-table, too, is a reindeer’s tongue, which, as you see it hung up in the shops, looks more like a policeman’s truncheon in active employment than anything else; but when well soaked and then properly treated in the boiling, is very tasty, and will melt like marrow in the mouth.
A simple, excellent August breakfast can be made from a dish of freshly-caught trout, the legs and back of a cold grouse, which has been roasted, not baked, and
A Large Peach.
But what of the wretched bachelor, as he enters his one sitting-room, in his humble lodging? He may have heard the chimes at midnight, in some gay and festive quarter, or, like some other wretched bachelors, he may have been engaged in the composition of romances for some exacting editor, until the smallish hours. Poor outcast! what sort of appetite will he have for the rusty rasher, or the shop egg, the smoked haddock, or the “Billingsgate pheasant,” which his landlady will presently send up, together with her little account, for his refection? Well, here is a much more tasty dish than any of the above; and if he be “square” with Mrs. Bangham, that lady will possibly not object to her “gal” cooking the different ingredients before she starts at the wash-tub. But let not the wretched bachelor suffer the “gal” to mix them.
I first met this dish in Calcutta during the two months of (alleged) cold weather which prevail during the year.
Calcutta Jumble.
A few fried fillets of white fish (sole, or plaice—sole for choice), placed on the top of some boiled rice, in a soup plate. Pour over them the yolks of two boiled eggs, and mix in one green chili, chopped fine. Salt to taste.
“Another way:”
Mix with the rice the following ingredients:—
The yolks of two raw eggs, one tablespoonful anchovy sauce, one small teaspoonful curry powder (raw), a sprinkling of cayenne, a little salt, and one green chili chopped fine. Each ingredient to be[Pg 17] added separately, and the eggs and curry powder to be stirred into the rice with a fork. Fillets of sole to be served atop.