For a special occasion, a bottle of truffles should be opened and used in this way :- Trim the truffles into dice, chopping up quite small the parings and trimmings which are left: this mince ought to be used in the liver force-meat : the dice should be tossed awhile in melted butter in a frying-pan, with a glass of Madeira, and a spoonful of good gravy and then cleverly put in amongst the game meat during the packing of the pie-dish. If mushrooms happen to be available as they often are during rainy weather, treat them, after cleaning and peeling them, exactly like the truffles : toss them a short time in butter in the frying-pan, if large, cut them into convenient pieces, or if buttons, put them in whole as you go on with your packing. Thus composed, and bountifully diluted with the aforesaid good gravy, our pie may be covered over with the best paste, baked, glazed, enriched with a second libation of rich gravy poured in through the vent to finish with, and served cold with confidence bordering upon exultation.

While on the subject of good pies, I can scarcely do better than end this chapter with an excellent recipe for a pie, practicable with seer-fish as well as with salmon.

Salmon pie, to be eaten cold :- Take one pound of salmon from the tin, and drain it from the tin liquor. If nice and firm, cut it into fillets with a dessert-knife. Make three-quarters of a pound of forcemeat as follows :- choose either some fresh uncooked whiting, pomfret, or other fresh fish and having taken eight ounces of it pass it through a wire sieve, add four ounces of fresh butter, and four of fine white crumbs, pound all together in a mortar, and season the puree with salt and pepper; moisten it with a cupful of rich poulette sauce, and bind the mixture with two raw eggs. Line a raised pie tin with paste as for pork pie, fill the bottom with a layer of the forcemeat, then a layer of the salmon, an inch thick, continuing the packing till the pie is filled. Put a cover of puff-paste over the top, brush it over with white of egg, and bake the pie slowly. When done, let it cool for half an hour, and then pour in, through a hole made in the top, a coffee-cupful of rich fish broth, made from the bones and trimmings of the fresh fish, reduced to a glaze, and mix with a coffee-cupful of essence of truffles made in this way:-

Take the contents of a small bottle of truffles, and boil them for twenty minutes briskly in a pint of clear chicken broth, flavoured with a glass of Madeira, some sweet herbs, pepper, salt, and a little nutmeg. Remove the sauce-pan from the fire, and when the liquid is cold, pick out the truffles (they will do for any other dish), and strain the cold essence.

After having poured the essence into the pie, let it get quite cold, then turn it out of the tin, put it upon a napkin, and serve. If made with uncooked seer fish instead of salmon, the pie will be found excellent.

There are, of course, many other pies concerning which I could give advice, I am, however, pretty confident that if you bear in mind the principles I have tried to make clear, you will rarely fail to succeed in composing a very eatable 'pasty,' and win approval from those for whose delectation you may exercise your ingenuity.

On the Hills, at Bangalore, and at many of the stations of this Presidency during the cold months, every one of the pies I have described will be found when cold to contain firm jelly, - not liquid gravy. If you desire to produce that cheerful effect at Madras, do not forget to place the pie upon ice for some little time before the meal at which it is to appear. The jelly is, of course, the united result of good gravy, and the juices of the various meats in the pie extracted by baking.

During the hot weather on the plains, if you cannot ice the pie, it will be found a good plan to pour off the gravy after it has left the table, hot. This will prevent the meat turning sour. The gravy can be heated the next morning, and the pie can be warmed up. Cold pie, without artificial cold imparted by ice, is an impossibility with the thermometer at 90°.