Roast Ducks

Pick, singe, and remove the crop, entrails, oil bag, legs, and pinions. Wipe, truss, dredge with salt, pepper, butter, and flour. Bake in a hot oven twenty minutes if liked rare, or thirty minutes if preferred well done. Serve with olive sauce and green peas. Geese and ducks have a strong flavor, and are improved by stuffing the craw and body with apples cored and quartered. The apples absorb the strong flavor, therefore should not be eaten. Celery and onions are also placed inside the duck, to improve its flavor.

Braised Ducks

Ducks that are tough and unfit to roast are improved by being braised with onions, carrots, and turnips. Or they may be stewed, and served with canned peas.

Larded Grouse

Clean, wipe, lard the breast and legs, and truss. Rub with salt and soft butter, and dredge with flour. Roast twenty minutes in a quick oven if liked rare, thirty minutes if well done. Serve with bread sauce.

Potted Pigeons

Draw and clean. Break the legs just above the feet; leave enough below the joint to tie down to the tail. Wash and wipe. If old and tough, cover them with vinegar, spiced and flavored with onion, and let them stand several hours. This makes them tender. Drain and wipe; stuff, if you like, with cracker crumbs highly seasoned and moistened with butter. Dredge with salt, pepper, and flour. Fry several slices of salt pork; cut one large onion fine, and fry in the salt pork fat. Put the crisp fat in the stew-pan, add the fried onion, then brown the pigeons all over in the fat left in the pan. Put them in the stewpan; add boiling water or stock enough to half- cover them; add a pinch of herbs tied in a bag. Simmer from one to three hours, or till the pigeons are tender. Remove the fat from the broth, season to taste, and thicken with flour and butter cooked together. Strain over the pigeons, and serve hot.

Braised Pigeons

Prepare the pigeons as for potted pigeons, and cook in a braising-pan. Cook spinach (see page 296); chop it fine, and season. Spread the spinach on slices of toast, and lay the pigeons on the spinach one on each slice. Serve the gravy in a boat.

Pigeons Stuffed with Parsley. (Miss Ward.)

Allow one pint of loose parsley for each pigeon. Wash, remove the large stems, and chop very fine, adding salt and pepper and two or three tablespoonfuls of water while chopping. Stuff the pigeons with the parsley; add also the heart and a half-inch cube of salt pork for each pigeon. Add the water left in the tray to that in the stewpan, and cook as in the preceding rule.

Roast Birds

Draw, and wash quickly; season with salt and pepper. Pin a thin slice of salt pork on the breast. Put on a shallow pan, and bake in a hot oven, fifteen or twenty minutes. Baste often. Serve on toast with currant jelly or with bread sauce. Small birds may be baked in sweet potatoes, or if large cut in halves, using the breast only. Cut the potatoes in halves lengthwise, make a cavity in each half, season the bird with salt, pepper, and butter; fit it into the potato, put the other half over it, and bake till the potatoes are soft. Remove the string, tie with a bright ribbon, and serve in the potatoes, garnished with parsley. An inviting dish to serve to an invalid.

Small birds are also broiled or stewed.

Quail

Quail may be roasted, broiled, or braised; or the breasts only may be removed and broiled. Use the bones and trimmings to make stock for a rich sauce.

Woodcock

Dress, and wipe clean. Dredge inside and out with salt and pepper; tie the legs close to the body, skin the head and neck, and tie the beak under the wings. Tie a piece of bacon over the breast, and fry in boiling lard two minutes; or roast in the oven, and serve on toast.