CHICKEN PUDDING
Cut up a pair of young chickens, and season them with pepper and salt and a little mace and nutmeg. Put them into a pot with two large spoonfuls of butter, and water enough to cover them. Stew them gently; and when about half cooked, take them out and set them away to cool. Pour off the gravy, and reserve it to be served up separately.
In the mean time, make a batter as if for a pudding, of eight table-spoonfuls of sifted flour stirred gradually into a quart of milk, six eggs well beaten and added by degrees to the mixture, and a very little salt. Put a layer of chicken in the bottom of a deep dish, and pour over it some of the batter; then another layer of chicken, and then some more batter; and so on till the dish is full, having a cover of batter at the top. Bake it till it is brown. Then break an egg into the gravy which you have set away, give it a boil, and send it to table in a sauce-boat to eat with the pudding.
A BONED TURKEY.
A large turkey.
Three sixpenny loaves of stale bread.
One pound of fresh butter.
Four eggs.
One bunch of pot-herbs, parsley, thyme, and little onions.
Two bunches of sweet marjoram.
Two bunches of sweet basil.
Two nutmegs. \
Half an ounce of cloves. } pounded fine.
A quarter of an ounce of mace. /
A table-spoonful of salt.
A table-spoonful of pepper.
Skewers, tape, needle, and coarse thread will be wanted.
Grate the bread, and put the crusts in water to soften. Then break them up small into the pan of crumbled bread. Cut up a pound of butter in the pan of bread. Rub the herbs to powder, and have two table-spoonfuls of sweet-marjoram and two of sweet basil, or more of each if the turkey is very large. Chop the pot-herbs, and pound the spice. Then add the salt and pepper, and mix all the ingredients well together. Beat slightly four eggs, and mix them with the seasoning and bread crumbs.
After the turkey is drawn, take a sharp knife and, beginning at the wings, carefully separate the flesh from the bone, scraping it down as you go; and avoid tearing or breaking the skin. Next, loosen the flesh from the breast and back, and then from the thighs. It requires great care and patience to do it nicely. When all the flesh is thus loosened, take the turkey by the neck, give it a pull, and the skeleton will come out entire from the flesh, as easily as you draw your hand out of a glove. The flesh will then be a shapeless mass. With a needle and thread mend or sew up any holes that may be found in the skin.
Take up a handful of the seasoning, squeeze it hard and proceed to stuff the turkey with it, beginning at the wings, next to the body, and then the thighs.
If you stuff it properly, it will again assume its natural shape. Stuff it very hard. When all the stuffing is in, sew up the breast, and skewer the turkey into its proper form, so that it will look as if it had not been boned.