“If partridge had the woodcock’s thighs,
’Twould be the noblest bird that flies;
If woodcock had the partridge breast,
’Twould be the best bird ever drest.”
Yesterday’s Pheasant can be made into a most tempting dish by cutting up the remains into convenient chunks, omitting the bones. Put one tablespoon of butter in the Dish, add a tablespoon of flour, and keep on stirring till the mixture is smooth and light brown. Add a glass of claret, a tablespoon of Worcester sauce, pepper and salt, and bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. Now put in the chunks of pheasant, and simmer for eight minutes. An excellent accompaniment to this is chestnut and celery salad.
Any game bird may be treated in like manner, save always the woodcock, that little epitome of all that is toothsome and delicate. A curious thing about the woodcock is its extraordinarily rapid digestion. A single bird has been known to consume in a night more earthworms than half filled a moderate-sized flowerpot.
Few people know the different expressions for flocks of birds. Here are some of them: a building of rooks, a bevy of quails, a watch of nightingales, a cast of hawks, a nide of pheasants, a muster of peacocks, a plump of wildfowl, a flock of geese, a pack of grouse, a chattering of choughs, a stand of plovers, and a wisp of snipe.
A woman I know had a very good cook, who was also a plain cook—or rather, a plain-spoken cook. She had been in the place many years, and much was forgiven her. The mistress, visiting the kitchen, inspected a turkey, and remarked that it was a very thin bird. “Just you wait, M’m, till I’ve stuffed it with chestnuts,” said the cook, “you won’t know it then. It’ll be quite another thing. Just like you, M’m, when you has your di’monds on.”
I do not advise the fabrication of elaborate entrées in the Chafing Dish. They can be and have been done, but I mistrust them and find ample scope for ingenuity, inventiveness, and novelty in the cates I have already described, without venturing into the fields of fancy. Vol-au-Vent, for instance, or Brains à la Poulette, or Spanish Cream Pudding are all within the range of feasibility, but I leave the recipes to those less timorous than myself. In fact, in this case, I am at one with the waiter in the “Bab Ballads” who hurled the most awful threat in culinary literature at his flighty sweetheart:
“Flirtez toujours, ma belle, si tu oses,