Eels ought to be slightly boiled first, whatever you do with them, you then get rid of their oiliness. After being thus treated, you can cut them into fillets for frying, for stewing, or for a pie. Eel fillets dipped in batter, and fried in oil or fat (lots of it) with a plain sharp sauce are delicious. The matelote will be found in the menus.

Tinned Australian, and other preserved lumps of meat, are valuable additions to the store box of the jungle-wallah, but they require very delicate handling, because they are almost always overdone. The really nutritious part of a tin of Australian meat is the gravy that surrounds it. Ramasamy knows this, so beware of unrighteous dealing, see the tin opened, and have every atom of the gravy strained off into a bowl. In cold weather, during such nights as you have in the Deccan during December and January for instance, the gravy in these tins becomes a jelly, so before you open one, set it on the fire in a sauce-pan surrounded by hot water for ten minutes or so; then open it, and strain the gravy from the tin into a bowl; turn the meat out carefully upon your sieve, and pour some hot water gently over it; catch the water in a bowl below the sieve, and add it to the gravy. Now, the gravy of a two-pound tin of beef will, as a rule, give you an excellent stock for two basins of soap: - skim the fat that may rise to its surface, and put it into a sauce-pan with a bag of dried sweet herbs, an onion cut into quarters, any vegetables you can spare, some pepper-corns, a pinch of spice, and salt according to the quantity : simmer this gently to extract the flavour of the things you have added, and in about a couple of hours you will have an excellent consomme, quite fit to be served as soup, with maccaroni, vermicelli, a couple of poached eggs, or Julienne, grated cheese accompanying; a table-spoonful of Marsala will be a grateful finishing stroke. Or it may be thickened like mock-turtle, and served with forcemeat balls.

The meat should be treated in this way: - choose the nicest looking pieces, trim them neatly, and if of a fair size, brush them over with egg, bread-crumb them, and brown them in the oven, serving a good sauce, - tomato, soubise, or piquante for instance, with them. Or you can cut the meat into collops, and hash them very gently in a carefully made gravy. Lastly, you can mince it and serve it in many nice ways, (vide page 173).

An excellent method may be thus described : - Having made your mince and flavoured it with a little chopped olive, anchovy, sausage meat, etc., bind it with a little good sauce thickened with a couple of eggs, and let it get cold : make a good sized thin pan-cake, take it from the pan when almost done, put it on a dish, and arrange some slices of cold cooked bacon upon it, lay the mince upon the bacon, give it a dust of spiced pepper, and fold the pan-cake over it : brush it over with an egg, bread-crumb it, and bake it a golden brown in your oven. The pancake should be just large enough to envelope the mince in one fold securely.

If you look upon a tin of preserved meat as a dish that has been cooked once, and has accordingly to be dressed en rechauffe, you will not fail to turn it to good account. But warmed up as it comes from the tin, unaided, and carelessly dished, it presents an irregular mass of sodden and tasteless diet which few would care to touch unless driven to do so by the calls of ungovernable hunger.

Messes like Messrs. Crosse and Blackwell's "ducks and green peas," " Irish stew," "ox cheek and vegetables," etc., should be avoided carefully, but if you find that your butler has sent such things to camp, you must pick the meat out of its surroundings, dress it with some fresh chicken meat, as a rissole, croustade or a mince, and cook the gravy and vegetables with some fresh chicken broth as a sauce.

I have already spoken of tinned vegetables, (pages 163 to 165) and also of the produce of the country. The traveller ought to try and find out what country garden stuff can be got from the villages near his camp. The recipes I have given will be found easy, and the monotony of tinned food will be much relieved by an occasional nicely dressed dish of common vegetables.

I will conclude this chapter with three very reliable recipes for cooking a hare. If you have shot the hare yourself so much the better, for then you will not find its heart, liver and kidneys gone. Skin, clean, and wash the animal well, saving the three parts I have mentioned carefully, and the blood. When quite clean, wipe the carcass inside and out, and let it soak in the marinade mentioned at page 65 all day, turning it every now and then. As the hour for cooking approaches, fill the hare with a well-made stuffing as for turkey (page 108). The kidneys and heart should be minced, and fried in fat bacon, with a little onion; when done, the contents of the pan should be poured into a bowl to cool, and when cold, pounded to a paste, and mixed with the stuffing. The back of the hare should be larded, or covered with thin slices of bacon pinned down with little skewers, it should then be roasted, a constant basting of melted butter or clarified beef suet being kept up throughout the process. When nearly done, the bacon strips should be removed, and the back lightly dredged with flour ; the skin should be allowed to brown, and run into crisp blisters : the hare should then be served, - with a sauce made as follows :-

First make a good pint of the best gravy you can : cut the liver into dice, take a small sauce-pan, melt an ounce of butter in it, throw into it an onion finely shredded, toss the onion till it colours nicely, then throw in the chopped liver, shaking the pan for a minute or two : next add a little gravy, stir well, pour in all the gravy and simmer till the liver is cooked. Now, strain the gravy, pour into it the marinade of port wine, vinegar, ketchup, and red currant jelly in which the hare was soaked, put it on the fire in a sauce-pan, and pour in very slowly as it warms the blood you saved in the first instance; continue stirring, and the sauce will thicken, throw into it the liver pounded to a paste, stir and serve very hot.

Ramasamy sometimes envelopes his hare in a coating of light batter. Pray caution him never to do so again.

"Jugged hare" is perhaps the best dish for camp life ; by many it is considered in any circumstances the best. This is a simple recipe: - Proceed as in the foregoing receipt as far as the skinning and cleaning is concerned. When ready, cut the hare up into neat pieces, dredge them with flour, and give them a few turns in the frying-pan with some butter till they take colour. Prepare beforehand a pint and a half of good strong stock (that of a fowl will do in camp) and choose a vessel that you can close securely with paste : put the pieces of hare into it, with two carrots, two or three large onions, an ounce of cilery, the juice of two Limes, a table-spoonful of sugar, and one of salt; pour in the stock, throw in a wine-glass of brandy, and seal the vessel as closely as possible; place it in a pan of cold water, and set it to boil, steaming the covered pot for three hours. When done, open the pot, stir into it a bumper glass of port, a dessert-spoonful of red currant jelly, and a lump of butter rolled in flour.* Serve with a dozen balls of stuffing made as for roast hare, and fried in butter. Instead of steaming the jar, it may be placed in the oven and baked for two or three hours.

An excellent hash may be made of a cold roast hare in this way : - Trim off as much of the meat as you can find in slices, and cut out what remains of the stuffing: break up all the bones and put them with the skin and scraps into a stew-pan with a large onion cut up, pepper-corns, a bit of celery if possible, and any vegetable, a little spice, any sauce that may have been left, a couple of glasses of red wine and enough water to cover the bones, etc., simmer these ingredients for an hour and a half, and then strain off the gravy. Thicken it with butter and flour, flavour it with a dessert-spoonful of red currant jelly, a table-spoonful of mushroom ketchup, half a glass of vinegar, and a little more red wine : heat up the slices of hare in this sauce taking care that they do not boil, and serve with the stuffing sliced and fried in butter as a garnish.

* Or you may strain the gravy, thicken it with flour and butter, add the wine, etc., and pour it over the meat again. - W.

I have found the process of "jugging" very effective with venison, especially with jungle-sheep. The neck and breast can be utilized in this manner.

Many of the dishes detailed in the previous chapters, especially those spoken of under the title of "Eggs, mac-caroni, and cheese," will be found practicable in the camp; amongst the menus, more than one nice recipe for cooking mutton, fowls, and chickens, has been recorded; in short, if the pilgrim be blessed by the possession of an intelligent cook, and provided with a judicious assortment of culinary necessaries and stores, his tent life should never fail to possess amongst its many attractions that indubitably important one - a really good dinner.

Note. - For various methods of treating preserved food of all kinds, see Wyvern's annotated catalogue of Messrs. John Moir and Son's provisions.