Obs.—We extract, for the benefit of our readers, from a work in our possession, the following passage, of which we have had no opportunity of testing the correctness. “Geese, with sage and onions, may be deprived of power to breathe forth any incense, thus: Pare from a lemon all the yellow rind, taking care not to bruise the fruit nor to cut so deeply as to let out the juice. Place this lemon in the centre of the seasoning within the bird. When or before it is brought to table, let the flap be gently opened, remove the lemon with a tablespoon; avoid breaking, and let it instantly be thrown away, as its white pithy skin will have absorbed all the gross particles which else would have escaped.”
TO ROAST A GREEN GOOSE.
Season the inside with a little pepper and salt, and roast the goose at a brisk fire from forty to fifty minutes. Serve it with good brown gravy only. To this sorrel-sauce is sometimes added at not very modern English tables, Green geese are never stuffed.
TO ROAST A FOWL.
[Fowls are always in season when they can be procured sufficiently young to be tender. About February they become dear and scarce; and small spring chickens are generally very expensive. As summer advances they decline in price.]
Fowl for roasting.
Strip off the feathers, and carefully pick every stump from the skin, as nothing can be more uninviting than the appearance of any kind of poultry where this has been neglected, nor more indicative of slovenliness on the part of the cook. Take off the head and neck close to the body, but leave sufficient of the skin to tie over the part that is cut. In drawing the bird, do not open it more than is needful, and use great precaution to avoid breaking the gall-bladder. Hold the legs in boiling water for two or three minutes that the skin may be peeled from them easily; cut the claws, and then, with a bit of lighted writing-paper, singe off the hairs without blackening the fowl. Wash, and wipe it afterwards very dry, and let the liver and gizzard be made delicately clean, and fastened into the pinions. Truss and spit it firmly; flour it well when first laid to the fire, baste it frequently with butter, and when it is done draw out the skewers, dish it, pour a little good gravy over, and send it to table with bread, mushroom, egg, chestnut, or olive sauce. A common mode of serving roast fowls in France is aux cressons, that is, laid upon young water-cresses,[[88]] which have previously been freed from the outer leaves, thoroughly washed, shaken dry in a clean cloth, and sprinkled with a little fine salt, and sometimes with a small quantity of vinegar: these should cover the dish, and after the fowls are placed on them, gravy should be poured over as usual.
[88]. This is done with many other roasts which are served in the second course but the vinegar is seldom added in this country.
The body of a fowl may be filled with very small mushrooms prepared as for partridges (see partridges with mushrooms), then sewn up, roasted, and served with mushroom-sauce: this is an excellent mode of dressing it. A little rasped bacon, or a bit or two of the lean of beef or veal minced, or cut into dice, may be put inside the bird when either is considered an improvement; but its own liver, or that of another fowl, will be found to impart a much finer flavour than any of these last; and so likewise will a teaspoonful of really good mushroom-powder smoothly mixed with a slice of good butter, and a seasoning of fine salt and cayenne.[[89]]