Salmi of goose
Cut the remains of a roast goose into small pieces, about an inch long and half as wide. Have ready a gravy made by boiling down the bones and toughest scraps until you have a cupful of strong stock. Add to this a carrot, a young turnip, a tomato, an apple and a stalk of celery, all cut into dice, and the vegetables parboiled for ten minutes. Simmer in the gravy until you can run them through your vegetable press. Put in the meat and cook slowly until tender. Thicken with browned flour.
GAME
The lower one descends in the social scale the less appreciation is there of game of any variety. What the plebeian terms “wild things” play a small part upon his menu—indeed, are probably altogether absent from it. He turns with a shrug from jugged hare, broiled quail and roast partridge to feast upon what is known in his set as “plain roast and boiled.” It is the epicure and the man of refined and cultivated gastronomic tastes who can appreciate good game.
Just here it may be well to remark that game need not of necessity be “high.” Some persons profess to prefer it when it has been kept so long as to be a little offensive to the olfactory organs. Whether or not this be affectation is not for us to judge. Suffice it to say that the following recipes are for the preparation of well-seasoned game, and not for viands that bear a distressing resemblance to carrion.
Saddle of venison
Rub the meat thoroughly with melted butter, and wrap it in buttered paper. Put into a covered roaster with a little water in the bottom of the pan. Allow at least twenty minutes’ roasting to every pound of meat. Half an hour before the meat is done remove the cover and the paper, and cook, basting every ten minutes with butter and a little melted currant jelly. At the end of the half-hour transfer the venison to a hot platter; strain the drippings left in the pan, add to them a cupful of boiling water, a dash of nutmeg, salt, pepper, two tablespoonfuls of butter and the same quantity of currant jelly. When the butter and the jelly are melted, pour the sauce into a gravy-boat and send to the table with the venison.
The loin, the haunch and the leg of venison may be cooked in like manner, and may be served with propriety even at a “company dinner,” although the saddle, like Abou Ben Adhem’s name, “leads all the rest.”