286 COOKERY OF THE GROUSE 



boiled egg, gherkins, beetroot, c., a dressing of what 

 the French would call an unusually corse kind is poured 

 over and if possible slightly iced. In the most aggressive 

 prescription I have seen for this, no less than two table- 

 spoonfuls of chopped shallots and as much of tarragon 

 and chervil figure. But anybody who can make a 

 salad at all can, of course, adjust the dressing to his 

 or her fancy, and the garnishing likewise. 



Grouse pie is of a higher order than these, although 

 the odd changes of fashion have banished it from the 

 chief meal of the day to breakfast, luncheon, and 

 supper, at neither of which does anything better often 

 appear. I do not know that anybody eats grouse pie 

 hot, though I can conceive no particular or valid 

 reason against it. It may be made, of course, in 

 all the gradations of pies the homely old variety with 

 edible crust, the 'raised pie,' whereof the crust is not 

 intended to be eaten, though persons of unsophisticated 

 habits and healthy appetite may be observed some- 

 times to attempt the feat and the pie in which there 

 is no pretence of crust at all, but which is concocted in 

 a more or less ornamental case of fireproof china. (It 

 was this last, perhaps, of which the poet of the Lakes, 

 where there is much moor-game, wrote ' celestial with 

 terrine ' though his foolish printers usually spell it 

 'terrene.') And so the complexity of the materials 



