ACCOMPANIMENTS.—With wild ducks, cucumber sauce, currant jelly or cranberry sauce.
ROAST DUCK WITH APPLES.
MISS BEEMER.
Pluck and singe a duck, draw it without breaking the intestines, wipe it with a wet towel and lay it in a baking pan; wipe a dozen small sour apples with a wet cloth, cut out the cores without breaking the apples, and arrange them around the duck; put the pan into a hot oven and quickly brown the duck, then moderate the heat of the oven and continue the cooking for about twenty minutes, or until the apples are tender but not broken, baste both duck and apples every five minutes until they are done, and then serve them on the same dish. It is a great improvement some think, to parboil the duck for fifteen minutes with an onion in the water, and the strong fishy flavor that is sometimes so disagreeable in wild ducks will have disappeared. A carrot will answer the same purpose.
ROAST QUAIL WITH BREAD SAUCE.
Peel and slice an onion and put it over the fire in a pint of milk; pluck and singe half a dozen quail, draw them without breaking the intestines, cut off the heads and feet, and wipe them with a wet towel; rub them all over with butter; season them with pepper and salt, and roast them before a very hot fire for fifteen minutes basting them three or four times with butter. Have some slices of toast laid under them to catch the drippings. While the birds are roasting make a bread sauce as follows; roll a pint bowlfull of dry bread, and sift the crumbs; use the finest ones for the sauce, and the largest for the frying later; remove the onion from the milk in which it has been boiling, stir into the milk the finest portion of the crumbs, season it with a saltspoonful of white pepper and a grate of nutmeg, stir in a tablespoonful of butter, and stir the sauce until it is smooth; then place the saucepan containing it in a pan of boiling water to keep it hot; put two tablespoonfuls of butter over the fire in a frying pan, and when it is smoking hot put into it the coarse half of the crumbs, dust them with cayenne pepper, and stir them until they are light brown; then at once put them on a hot dish; put the bread sauce into a gravy-boat ready to send it to the table. Arrange to have the fried breadcrumbs, sauce and quail done at the same time; serve the birds on the toast which has been laid under them; in serving the quail, lay each bird on a hot plate, pour over it a large spoonful of the bread sauce and on that place a spoonful of the fried bread crumbs.
VENISON STEAK.
MRS. ERNEST F. WURTELE.
Take a piece of frozen venison, and put into water in which has been put two tablespoons of vinegar. Just leave until the ice comes to the surface of the meat, take the meat out and remove the ice with a knife; wipe dry and flour well, put a good piece of butter in the pan; let brown, put the steak in salt, and pepper, fry on both sides, then add a cup of rich milk, push the pan to the back of the stove and cover it and let it stew slowly for one and a half hours—If the steak is very dry lard it with salt pork before frying.