VENISON POT-PIE.—
Remove the bone from some fine venison steaks, cut near an inch thick. Season them lightly with pepper and salt, and score them each in several places. Stew them in a very little water till tender. Have ready an ample portion of nice suet paste. If you cannot obtain beef suet use cold venison fat, minced fine and made into a paste with double its quantity in flour, and as little water as possible. Lay some stewed venison at the bottom of the pot, and line the sides with paste almost up to the top. Put in the meat, adding among it boiled sweet potatos cut into pieces, or (if they are to be had in plenty,) chestnuts, boiled and peeled. Mushrooms will be a great improvement. Onion also, (if liked,) boiled and cut up. Intersperse the whole with square pieces of paste. Fill the pot almost to the top with the meat and other ingredients. Lay a thick paste over the whole, cut round to fit, but not too closely. Pour in a pint of warm water to increase the gravy. Make a cross slit in the middle of the upper crust. Cook the pie till all is well done. Serve it up with the brown crust in pieces, and laid on the top.
This pie, if well made, and with plenty of paste, will be thought excellent whenever fresh venison is to be had.
VENISON HAM.—
Take fine freshly-killed venison. Mix together an ounce of saltpetre, a pound of coarse brown sugar, and a pound of salt. Let them be very thoroughly mixed and pounded. Rub this well into the meat, and continue rubbing hard till it froths. Keep the meat in the pickle for two weeks, turning it every day. Then take it out, and roll it in saw-dust, (which, on no account, must be the saw-dust of any species of pine.) Hang it for two weeks longer in the smoke of oak wood or of corn cobs. All hams, when being smoked, must be hung very high, and have the large end downwards. If hung too low, the heat softens or melts the fat.
Venison hams, if well cured, require no boiling. They are always eaten chipped or shaved like smoked beef, to which they are very superior. It may be stewed in a skillet with fresh butter and beaten egg, and cut into thin shavings, or very thin small slices—or, instead of butter, with the drippings of cold roast venison. Season with pepper only.
RABBITS.—
Rabbits should be young and tender, but full-grown and fat. Two are required to make a dish. One rabbit, except for an invalid, is scarcely worth the trouble of cooking; and, being naturally insipid, it must have certain seasoning to make it taste well. The hare, so much prized in England, owes its reputation entirely to their mode of dressing it, which is troublesome, expensive, and in our country would never become popular, unless the animal had in itself more to recommend it. With all that can be done for a hare, it is, when cooked, black, dry, hard; and if it has been kept long enough to acquire what they call the "true game flavor," so much the worse. A fine fat well-fed tame rabbit is much better. In Virginia, the negroes frequently call a large rabbit "a hare"—or rather "a yar;" and though they know it to be young, they generally term it "that old yar." We opine that with them "yars" are not admired. If a rabbit is really old his ears are tough, and his claws blunt and rough with coarse hairs growing between them. A young rabbit has short sharp claws, and ears so tender that on trying you can easily tear them. Rabbits should be cooked the day they are killed. Always cut off the head. A rabbit dished whole, with its head on, is, to most persons, a disgusting sight. The head of no small animal is worth eating, and always looks disagreeable when cooked.