The neck, breast, and shoulder are the parts used for a venison pie or pasty. Cut the meat into pieces (fat and lean together) and put the bones and trimmings into a stew-pan with pepper and salt, and water or veal broth enough to cover it. Simmer it till you have drawn out a good gravy. Then strain it.
In the mean time make a good rich paste, and roll it rather thick. Cover the bottom and sides of a deep dish with one sheet of it, and put in your meat, having seasoned it with pepper, salt, nutmeg, and mace. Pour in the gravy which you have prepared from the trimmings, and two glasses of port or claret, and lay on the top some hits of butter rolled in flour. Cover the pie with a thick lid of paste, and ornament it handsomely with leaves and flowers formed with a tin cutter. Bake it two hours or more, according to its size.
Venison for hams must be newly killed, and in every respect as good as possible. Mix together equal quantities of salt and brown sugar, and rub it well into the hams. Put them into a tub, and let them lie seven days; turning them and rubbing them daily with the mixture of salt and sugar. Next mix together saltpetre and common salt, in the proportion of two ounces of saltpetre to a handful of salt. Rub it well into your hams, and let them lie a week longer. Then wipe them, rub them with bran, and smoke them a fortnight over hickory wood. Pack them in wood ashes.
Venison ham must not be cooked before it is eaten. It is used for the tea-table, chipped or shred like dried beef, to which it is considered very superior.
It will not keep as long as other smoked meat.
A kid should be cooked the day it is killed, or the day after at farthest. They are best from three to four months old, and are only eaten while they live on milk.
Wash the kid well, wipe it dry, and truss it. Stuff the body with a force-meat of grated bread, butter or suet, sweet herbs, pepper, salt, nutmeg, grated lemon-peel, and beaten egg; and sew it up to keep the stuffing in its place. Put it on the spit and rub it over with lard, or sweet oil. Put a little salt and water into the dripping-pan, and baste the kid first with that, and afterwards with its own gravy. Or you may make it very nice by basting it with cream. It should roast about three hours. At the last, transfer the gravy to a small sauce-pan; thicken it with a little butter rolled in flour, give it a boil up, and send it to table in a boat. Garnish the kid with lumps of currant jelly laid round the edge of the dish.