it cannot be said that your Nimrod is nearly as well catered for as is the “Gun.” For, as a rule, the first-named, if he be really keen on the sport of kings has to content himself, during the interval of a “check,” with the contents of a sandwich-case, and a flask, which may contain either brown sherry or brandy and water—or possibly something still more seductive. I have heard of flasks which held milk punch, but the experience is by no means a familiar one. If your Nimrod be given to “macadamising,” instead of riding the line, or if he sicken of the business altogether before hounds throw off, he can usually “cadge” a lunch at some house in the neighbourhood, even though it may only “run to” bread and cheese—or, possibly, a wedge of a home-made pork-pie—with a glass, or mug, of nut brown ale. Not that all ale is “nut brown,” but ’tis an epithet which likes me well. Would it were possible to give practical hints here as to the true way to manufacture a pork-pie! To make the attempt would, I fear, only serve to invite disaster; for the art of pork-pie making, like that of the poet, or the play-actor, should be born within us. In large households in the midland counties (wherein doth flourish the pig tart) there is, as a rule, but one qualified pie-maker—who is incapable of any other culinary feat whatever. I have even been told that it requires “special hands” to make the crust of the proper consistency; and having tasted crusts and crusts, I can implicitly believe this statement. Here is a recipe for a veritable savoury
Yorkshire Pie.
Bone a goose and a large fowl. Fill the latter with the following stuffing:—minced ham, veal, suet, onion, sweet herbs, lemon peel, mixed spices, goose-liver, cayenne, and salt, worked into a paste with the yolks of two eggs. Sew up the fowl, truss it, and stew it with the goose for twenty minutes in some good beef and giblet stock, with a small glass of sherry, in a close stewpan. Then put the fowl inside the goose, and place the goose within a pie-mould which has been lined with good hot-water paste. Let the goose rest on a cushion of stuffing, and in the middle of the liquor in which he has been stewed. Surround him in the pie with slices of parboiled tongue and chunks of semi-cooked pheasant, partridge, and hare, filling in the vacancies with more stuffing, put a layer of butter atop, roof in the pie with paste, bake for three hours, and eat either hot or cold—the latter for choice.
For a skating luncheon
Irish Stew
is the recognised entrée, served in soup-plates, and washed down with hot spiced ale.
In the way of
Race-course Luncheons
our caterers have made giant strides in the last dozen years. A member of a large firm once told me that it was “out of the question” to supply joints, chops, and steaks in the dining-rooms of a grand stand, distant far from his base of operations, London. “Impossible, my dear sir! we couldn’t do it without incurring a ruinous loss.” But the whirligig of time has proved this feat to be not only possible, but one which has led to the best results for all concerned. In the matter of chops and steaks I hope to see further reforms introduced. These succulent dainties, it cannot be too widely known, are not at their best unless cut fresh from loin or rump, just before being placed on the gridiron. The longer a cut chop (raw) is kept the more of its virtue is lost. It might, possibly, cause a little extra delay, and a little extra expense, to send off loins and rumps from the butcher’s shop, instead of ready-cut portions, but the experiment would answer, in the long run. The same rule, of course, should apply to restaurants and grill-rooms all over the world.
During the autumn and winter months, race-course caterers seem to have but one idea of warm comforting food for their customers, and the name of that idea is Irish stew. This is no doubt an appetising dish, but might be varied occasionally for the benefit of the habitual follower of the sport of kings. Why not pea-soup, jugged hare (hares are cheap enough), hot-pot, Scotch broth, mullagatawny, hotch-potch, stewed or curried rabbit, with rice, shepherd’s pie, haricot ox-tails, sheep’s head broth (Scotch fashion), and hare soup! What is the matter with the world-renowned stew of which we read in The Old Curiosity Shop—the supper provided by the landlord of the “Jolly Sandboys” for the itinerant showmen? Here it is again: