This section is from the book "The Post-Graduate Cookery Book", by Adolphe Meyer. Also available from Amazon: The Post-Graduate Cookery Book.
Bone 24 reedbirds, and spread them on the table; prepare a stuffing of three-fourths chicken forcemeat and one-fourth cooked forcemeat; season highly; put on each bird I teaspoon-ful of stuffing and a piece of fat goose liver (about 1/2 inch square), and give them a round shape; lay them on a buttered saute pan, quite close together, so as to retain their shape when cooking; 15 minutes before serving, pour some melted butter over the birds, and put them in the oven to cook for a quarter of an hour. Then dress them in the Vol au Vent and pour over a thick Madeira sauce with sliced truffles. Serve on folded napkin.
Boil a partridge in some chicken broth, together with 2 stalks of celery. When tender, prepare a sauce with the stock of the partridge, and add to it 1 pint of cream; cut the breast of the partridge into small pieces, and add it with the celery to the sauce; parboil the belly part of 18 oysters, and cook 18 small heads of fresh mushrooms in butter; then add both to the sauce. Season to taste; fill up the patties and serve.
Remove the marrow from 6 marrow bones and cut it in 1/2-inch squares, plunge it into boiling salted water for 2 or 3 minutes, and put it into 1/2 pint of well reduced and well seasoned Madeira sauce. Add 3 good-sized truffles, cut into 1/4-inch cubes; fill the patties, and serve on folded napkin.
Cut 1 dozen chicken livers in 1/2-inch cubes, and saute them over a bright fire; drain and add to 1 gill of Chasseur sauce, heat well (but do not allow to boil), fill the patties, and serve.
Cut into 1/4-inch squares 1 part each of cooked turkey or chicken breast and smoked beef tongue, truffles, mushrooms, Lucca olives and sweet red peppers. Heat these ingredients in some well reduced Madeira sauce, and just before serving fill up the heated small patties.
Cut in very small dice one part each of onion, carrot, turnip, celery, mushroom and cabbage; put the vegetables in a pan with a piece of butter, set on the fire and stir until the vegetables have rendered their humidity. Then moisten with chicken broth and allow to reduce completely, by which time the vege-ables should be cooked.
Add some well reduced Bechamel or veloute sauce, just enough to give the vegetables consistency; season highly, and set in a cool place.
Roll out some puff paste rather thin, cut out some round pieces 2 1/2 inches in diameter, place a dessertspoonful of the above preparation on each, wet the edges and fold over.
Next place on a baking sheet, brush over with beaten eggs and bake in a moderate oven. Serve hot on a napkin.
Note. - These patties may be made with fish or forcemeat of different sorts; keeping this initial receipt in mind, the others are easily prepared.
 
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