Ingredients.—2 oz. of ham or lean bacon, ¼ lb. of suet, the rind of half a lemon, 1 teaspoonful of minced parsley, 1 teaspoonful of minced sweet herbs; salt, cayenne, and pounded mace to taste; 6 oz. of bread-crumbs, 2 eggs. Mode.—Shred the ham or bacon, chop the suet, lemon-peel, and herbs, taking particular care that all be very finely minced; add a seasoning to taste of salt, cayenne, and mace, and blend all thoroughly together with the bread-crumbs, before wetting. Now beat and strain the eggs; work these up with the other ingredients, and the forcemeat will be ready for use. When it is made into balls, fry of a nice brown, in boiling lard, or put them on a tin and bake for ½ hour in a moderate oven. As we have stated before, no one flavour should predominate greatly, and the forcemeat should be of sufficient body to cut with a knife, and yet not dry and heavy. For very delicate forcemeat, it is advisable to pound the ingredients together before binding with the eggs; but for ordinary cooking, mincing very finely answers the purpose. Average cost, 8d. Sufficient for a turkey, a moderate-sized fillet of veal, or a hare.
Note.—In the forcemeat for Hare, the liver of the animal is sometimes added. Boil for 5 minutes, mince it very small, and mix it with the other ingredients. If it should be in an unsound state, it must be on no account made use of.
FOWLS, Boiled, à la Béchamel.
Ingredients.—A pair of fowls, 1 pint of Béchamel, a few bunches of boiled broccoli or cauliflower. Mode.—Truss and boil the flowers; make a pint of Béchamel sauce; pour some of this over the fowls, and the remainder send to table in a tureen. Garnish the dish with bunches of boiled cauliflowers or broccoli, and serve very hot. The sauce should be made sufficiently thick to adhere to the fowls; that for the tureen should be thinned by adding a spoonful or two of stock. Time.—From ½ to 1 hour, according to size. Average cost, in full season, 5s. a pair. Sufficient for 6 or 7 persons. Seasonable all the year, but scarce in early spring.
FOWLS, Boiled, to Carve.
BOILED FOWL.
LEG, WING, AND NECKBONE OF FOWL.
This will not be found a very difficult member of the poultry family to carve, unless, as may happen, a very old farm-yard occupant, useless for egg-laying purposes, has, by some unlucky mischance, been introduced into the kitchen as a “fine young chicken.” Skill, however, and the application of a small amount of strength, combined with a fine keeping of the temper, will even get over that difficulty. Fixing the fork firmly in the breast, let the knife be firmly passed along the line shown from 1 to 2; then cut downwards from that line to fig. 3: and the wing, it will be found, can be easily withdrawn. The shape of the wing should be like the accompanying engraving. Let the fork be placed inside the leg, which should be gently forced away from the body of the fowl; and the joint, being thus discovered, the carver can readily cut through it, and the leg can be served. When the leg is displaced, it should be of the same shape as that shown in the annexed woodcut. The legs and wings on either side having been taken off, the carver should draw his knife through the flesh in the direction of the line 4 to 5; by this means the knife can be slipped underneath the merrythought, which, being lifted up and pressed backward, will immediately come off. The collar- or neck-bones are the next to consider: these lie on each side of the merrythought, close under the upper part of the wings; and, in order to free these from the fowl, they must also be raised by the knife at their broad end, and turned from the body towards the breastbone, until the shorter piece of the bone, as shown in the cut, breaks off. There will now be left only the breast, with the ribs. The breast can be, without difficulty, disengaged from the ribs by cutting through the latter, which will offer little impediment. The side bones are now to be taken off; and to do this, the lower end of the back should be turned from the carver, who should press the point of the knife through the top of the backbone, near the centre, bringing it down towards the end of the back completely through the bone. If the knife be now turned in the opposite direction, the joint will be easily separated from the vertebræ. The backbone being now uppermost, the fork should be pressed firmly down on it, whilst at the same time the knife should be employed in raising up the lower small end of the fowl towards the fork, and thus the back will be dislocated about its middle. The wings, breast, and merrythought are esteemed the prime parts of a fowl, and are usually served to the ladies of the company, to whom legs, except as a matter of paramount necessity, should not be given. Byron gave it as one reason why he did not like dining with ladies, that they always had the wings of the fowls, which he himself preferred. We heard a gentleman who, when he might have had a wing, declare his partiality for a leg, saying that he had been obliged to eat legs for so long a time that he had at last come to like them better than the other more prized parts. If the fowl is, capon-like, very large, slices may be carved from its breast in the same manner as from a turkey’s.