Game Pie.
Take ten ounces of veal and the same of veal fat, and chop it very fine, season with pepper, salt, and cayenne. Arrange this as a lining round a china raised pie mould. Fill in with fillets of grouse, pheasant, partridge, and hare, strips of tongue, ham, hard-boiled yolks of eggs, button mushrooms, pistachio nuts, truffles, and pâté de foie gras; cover in with more of the mince, then put a paste on the top for cooking it in. Bake from two and a half to three hours. Remove the paste and fill the mould up with clarified meat jelly, partly cold; let this set. Ornament the top with chopped aspic and alternate slices of lemon and cucumber round. Croûtons of red and yellow aspic should be arranged at the base of the mould.
Game Rissoles au Poulet à la Carême.
Roll out very thin three-quarters of a pound of Brioche paste. Place upon it, two inches from the edge, minced fowl or game, prepared as for croquets, and rolled up between two teaspoons in balls the size of a nutmeg. Place these an inch from each other; egg the paste all round and fold the edge of it over the balls of mince. Press it firmly down, and with a paste stamp two inches wide cut the rissoles, keeping the mince balls exactly in the centre of each. Lay them on a hot tin that the paste may rise and fry them in lard not too hot, turning them with a skewer. They will become quite round. When of a good golden colour drain them and serve directly, and dish up in a pyramid.
Salad of Game à la Francatelli.
Boil eight eggs hard; shell them, and cut a thin slice off the bottom of each, cut each into four lengthwise. Make a very thin flat border of butter about one inch from the edge of the dish the salad is to be served on, fix the pieces of egg upright close to each other, the yolk outside, or alternately the white and yolk, lay in the centre a layer of fresh salad, and, having cut a freshly roasted young grouse into eight or ten pieces, prepare a sauce as follows: Put a spoonful of eschalots finely chopped in a basin, one ditto of castor sugar, the yolk of one egg, a teaspoonful of chopped parsley, tarragon, and chervil, and a little salt. Mix in by degrees four spoonfuls of oil and two of white vinegar. When well mixed put it on ice, and when ready to serve up whip a gill of cream, which lightly mix with it. Then lay the inferior parts of the grouse on the salad, sauce over so as to cover each piece, then lay over the salad and the remainder of the grouse, sauce over, and serve. The eggs can be ornamented with a little dot of radish or beetroot on the point. Anchovy and gherkin, cut into small diamonds, may be placed between.
Grouse in Aspic.
Roast a brace of grouse, and skin them, and mask them with brown sauce in which aspic has been mixed. Cut some pistachio kernels into pretty shapes and ornament the birds. Take a large square tin mould (a baking tin will do), pour in a layer of pale aspic, and when it is all but cold place the grouse on it breast downward, one turned one way and one the other, then gradually fill it up with the aspic, and put on ice. Turn out and decorate the base with chopped aspic, truffles, parsley, and tomatoes.