Make a force-meat of grated bread-crumbs, minced suet, sweet marjoram, grated lemon-peel, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and beaten yolk of egg. You may add some grated cold ham. Light some writing paper, and singe the hairs from the skin of the turkey. Reserve the neck, liver, and gizzard for the gravy. Stuff the craw of the turkey with the force-meat, of which there should be enough made to form into balls for frying, laying them round the turkey when it is dished. Dredge it with flour, and roast it before a clear brisk fire, basting it with cold lard. Towards the last, set the turkey nearer to the fire, dredge it again very lightly with flour, and baste it with butter. It will require, according to its size, from two to three hours roasting. Make the gravy of the giblets cut in pieces, seasoned, and stewed for two hours in a very little water; thicken it with a spoonful of browned flour, and stir into it the gravy from the dripping-pan, having first skimmed off the fat. A turkey should be accompanied by ham or tongue. Serve up with it mushroom-sauce. Have stewed cranberries on the table to eat with it. Do not help any one to the legs, or drum-sticks as they are called. Turkeys are sometimes stuffed entirely with sausage-meat. Small cakes of this meat should then be fried, and laid round it. To bone a turkey, you must begin with a very sharp knife at the top of the wings, and scrape the flesh loose from the bone without dividing or cutting it to pieces. If done carefully and dexterously, the whole mass of flesh may be separated from the bone, so that you can take hold of the head and draw out the entire skeleton at once. A large quantity of force-meat having been prepared, stuff it hard into the turkey, restoring it by doing so to its natural form, filling out the body, breast, wings and legs, so as to resemble their original shape when the bones were in. Roast or bake it; pouring a glass of port wine into the gravy. A boned turkey is frequently served up cold, covered with lumps of currant jelly; slices of which are laid round the dish. Any sort of poultry or game may be boned and stuffed in the same manner, A cold turkey that has not been boned is sometimes sent to table larded all over the breast with slips of fat bacon, drawn through the flesh with a larding needle, and arranged in regular form.
Take a calf's head and boil it as much as you would do for eating, when it is cold cut in thin slices, and put it into a stew-pan with a white gravy; then put to it a little shred mace, salt, a pint of oysters, a few shred mushrooms, lemon-peel, three spoonful of white wine, and some juice of lemon, shake all together, and boil it over the stove, thicken it up with a little flour and butter; when you put it on your dish, you must put a boil'd fowl in the midst, and few slices of crisp bacon. Garnish your dish with pickles and lemon.
Take a faire large Pigge and cut off his Head, then slit him through the midst, then take forth his bones, then lay him in warme water one night, then Collar him up like Brawne; then boyle him tender in faire water, and when he is boyled put him in an earthen Pot or Pan into Water and Salt, for that will make him white, and season the flesh, for you must not put Salt in the boyling, for that will make it black, then take a quart of the same broth, and a quart of white wine; boyl them together to make some drink for it, put into it two or three Bay leaves, when it is cold uncloathe the Pig, and put it into the same drink, & it will continue a quarter of a year. It is a necessary Dish in any Gentlemans House; when you serve it in, serve it with greene Fennell, as you doe Sturgion with Vinegar in Saucers.
Take a round of beeŁ; and stuff it with half pound pork, half pound of butter, the soft of half a loaf of wheat bread, boil four eggs very hard, chop them up; add sweet marjoram, sage, parsley, summersavory, and one ounce of cloves pounded, chop them all together, with two eggs very fine, and add a jill of wine, season very high with salt and pepper, cut holes in your beef, to put your stuffing in, then stick whole cloves into the beef, then put it into a two pail pot, with sticks at the bottom, if you wish to have the beef round when done, put it into a cloth and bind it tight with 20 or 30 yards of twine, put it into your pot with two or three quarts of water, and one jill of wine, if the round be large it will take three or four hours to bake it.
Wash the saddle carefully; see that no hairs are left dried on to the outside. Use a saddle of venison of about ten pounds. Cut some salt pork in strips about two inches long and an eighth of an inch thick, with which lard the saddle with two rows on each side. In a large dripping-pan cut two carrots, one onion and some salt pork in thin slices; add two bay-leaves, two cloves, four kernels of allspice, half a lemon sliced, and season with salt and pepper; place the saddle of venison in the pan, with a quart of good stock boiling hot and a small piece of butter, and let it boil about fifteen minutes on top of the stove; then put it in a hot oven and bake, basting well every five minutes, until it is medium rare, so that the blood runs when cut; serve with jelly or a wine sauce. If the venison is desired well done, cook much longer, and use a cream sauce with it, or stir cream into the venison gravy. (For cream sauce see SAUCES.) Venison should never be roasted unless very fat. The shoulder is a roasting piece and may be done without the paper or paste. In ordering the saddle request the butcher to cut the ribs off pretty close, as the only part that is of much account is the tenderloin and thick meat that lies along the backbone up to the neck. The ribs which extend from this have very little meat on them, but are always sold with the saddle. When neatly cut off they leave the saddle in a better shape, and the ribs can be put into your stock-pot to boil for soup. Windsor Hotel, Montreal.
Prepare your dressing as for DRESSING FOR FOWLS, adding half an onion, chopped fine; set it inside. Take a young pig about six weeks old, wash it thoroughly inside and outside; and in another water put a teaspoonful of baking soda, and rinse out the inside again; wipe it dry with a fresh towel, salt the inside and stuff it with the prepared dressing; making it full and plump, giving it its original size and shape. Sew it up, place it in a kneeling posture in the dripping-pan, tying the legs in proper position. Pour a little hot salted water into the dripping-pan, baste with butter and water a few times as the pig warms, afterwards with gravy from the dripping-pan. When it begins to smoke all over rub it often with a rag dipped in melted butter. This will keep the skin from cracking and it still will be crisp. It will take from two to three hours to roast. Make the gravy by skimming off most of the grease; stir into that remaining in the pan a good tablespoonful of flour, turn in water to make it the right consistency, season with pepper and let all boil up once. Strain, and if you like wine in it, add half a glass; turn it into a gravy boat. Place the pig upon a large, hot platter, surrounded with parsley or celery tops; place a green wreath around the neck, and a sprig of celery in its mouth. In carving, cut off its head first; split down the back, take off its hams and shoulders, and separate the ribs.
Prepare a pair of fine young ducks, the same as for roasting, place them in a stewpan together with two or three slices of bacon, a carrot, an onion stuck with two cloves, and a little thyme and parsley. Season with pepper, and cover the whole with a broth, adding to the broth a gill of white wine. Place the pan over a gentle fire and allow the ducks to simmer until done, basting them frequently. When done remove them from the pan, and place them where they will keep hot. A turnip should then be cut up and fried in some butter. When nicely browned, drain the pieces and cook them until tender in the liquor in which the ducks were braised. Now strain and thicken the gravy, and after dishing up the ducks, pour it over them, garnishing with the pieces of turnip. Palmer House, Chicago.
Take a peice of Bacon not very fat, but sweet and safe from being rusty, a peice of fresh beefe, a couple of hoggs Eares, and foure feet if they can be had, and if not, some quantity of sheeps feet, (Calves feet are not proper) a joynt of Mutton, the Leg, Rack, or Loyne, a Hen, halfe a dozen pigeons, a bundle of Parsley, Leeks, and Mint, a clove of Garlick when you will, a small quantity of Pepper, Cloves, and Saffron, so mingled that not one of them over-rule, the Pepper and Cloves must be beaten as fine as possible may be, and the Saffron must be first dryed, and then crumble in powder and dissolved apart in two or three spoonfuls of broth, but both the Spices and the Saffron may be kept apart till immediately before they be used, which must not be, till within a quarter of a houre before the Olio be taken off from the fire; a pottle of hard dry pease, when they have first steept in water some dayes, a pint of boyl'd Chesnuts: particular care must be had that the pot wherein the Olio is made, be very sweet; Earthen I thinke is the best, and judgement is to be had carefully both in the size of the Pot, and in the quantity of the Water at the first, that so the Broth may grow afterwards to be neither too much nor too little, nor too grosse, nor too thin; thy meat must be long in boyling, but the fire not too fierce, the Bacon, the Beef, the Pease, the Chesnuts, the Hogs Eares may be put in at the first. I am utterly against those confused Olios into which men put almost all kinds of meats and Roots, and especially against putting of Oyle, for it corrupts the Broath, instead of adding goodnesse to it. To do well, the Broth is rather to be drunk out of a Porringer then to be eaten with a spoon, though you add some smal slices of bread to it, you wil like it the worse. The Sauce for thy meat must be as much fine Sugar beaten smal to powder, with a little Mustard, as can be made to drink the Sugar up, and you wil find it to be excellent, but if you make it not faithfully and justly according to this prescript, but shall neither put Mace, or Rosemary, or Tyme to the Herbs as the manner is of some, it will prove very much the worse.
The very finest pork must be used for these hams. Mix together an equal quantity of powdered saltpetre and brown sugar, and rub it well into the hams. Next day make a pickle in sufficient quantity to cover them very well. The proportions of the ingredients are a pound and a half of fine salt, half a pound of brown sugar, an ounce of black pepper and an ounce of cloves pounded to powder, a small bit of sal prunella, and a quart of stale strong beer or porter. Boil them all together, so as to make a pickle that will bear up an egg. Pour it boiling hot over the meat, and let it lie in the pickle two weeks, turning it two or three times every day, and basting or washing it with the liquid. Then take out the hams, rub them with bran and smoke them for a fortnight. When done, keep them in a barrel of wood ashes. In cooking these hams simmer them slowly for seven or eight hours. To imitate the shape of the real Westphalia hams, cut some of the meat off the under side of the thick part, so as to give them a flat appearance. Do this before you begin to cure them, first loosening the skin and afterwards sewing it on again. The ashes in which you keep them must be changed frequently, wiping the hams when you take them out.
