Thatched House Pie - (French Dish.)

Rub the inside of a deep dish with two ounces of fresh butter, and spread over it two ounces of vermicelli. Then line the dish with puff-paste. Have ready some birds seasoned with powdered nutmeg, and a very little salt and pepper. Place them with the breast downward. They will be much improved by putting into each a mushroom or an oyster chopped fine. Lay them on the paste.

Add some gravy of roast veal, (cold gravy saved from veal roasted the preceding day will do very well,) and cover the pie with a lid of puff-paste. Bake it in a moderate oven, and when done, turn it out carefully upon a flat dish, and send it to table. The vermicelli, which was originally at the bottom, will now be at the top, covering the paste like thatch upon a roof. Trim off the edge, so as to look nicely. You may, if you choose, use a larger quantity of vermicelli. The yellow sort will be best for this purpose.

Birds Prepared For Larding

Cut a thin slice of fresh veal, and fill the bird with it, adding a bit of fat bacon. Tie a string round the body to keep in the stuffing, and roast the bird head downward. The gravy of the meat will diffuse a pleasant taste all through the bird.

After being well roasted, let it get cold, and then lard it all over the breast with lardons or regular slips of fat bacon, put in with a larding needle, and left standing in rows. It is more easy to lard poultry or game when cold, rather than warm. Lardons should be set very close and evenly.

Bird Dumplings

Take a large tender beef steak, trim off all the fat, and remove the bone. Make a large sheet of nice suet paste. Lay the beef steak upon it, seasoned with pepper and a very little salt. In the centre of the meat 19 place either a partridge, a quail, a plover, or any-nice game, or three or four reed-birds - season with powdered mace and nutmeg. Add some bits of excellent fresh butter, dredged with flour. Inclose the birds completely in the steak, so that the game flavor may pervade the whole. Close the crust over all, so as to form a large dumpling. Tie it in a cloth. Put it into a pot of fast-boiling water, and boil it well, turning it several times with a fork. Dish it very hot.

If game is not convenient, a fine tame fat pigeon may be substituted.

To Roast Woodcocks Ok Snipes

Be very careful in plucking these to pull out the feathers as carefully and handle them as lightly as possible; for the skin is very easily torn or broken. Do not draw them, for epicures have decided, that the trail, (as they call the intestines,) is the most delicious part of the bird, and should by all means be saved for eating. Having wiped the outside carefully with a soft cloth, truss them with the head under the wing, and the bill laid along upon the breast. Keep the legs bent from the knees, retaining that posture by means of a splinter skewer. Suspend the birds to a bird-spit, with their feet downward. Melt some fresh butter in the dripping-pan, and baste them with it, having first dredged the birds with flour. Before the trail begins to drop, (which it will do as soon as they are well heated,) lay a thick round of very nice toast, (with the crust pared off,) buttered on both sides, and placed in the dripping-pan beneath, so as to catch the trail as it falls; allowing a slice of toast to each bird, with the trail spread equally over it. Continue the basting, letting the butter fall back from them into the basting spoon. When the birds are done, which will be in less than half an hour at a brisk fire - carefully transfer the toasts to a very hot dish; place the birds upon them, and pour some gravy round the toast.

Snipes require less cooking than woodcocks. These birds are very fashionable; but we do not think either of them superlative. They seldom appear except at supper parties.