THE COOKERY OF VENISON 295 



inte the pasty, when, instead of speculating on a slice 

 which may be better or worse at the will of the 

 carver, you may cut and come again in a round 

 game, where there are prizes and no blanks. That 

 is to say, if the cook knows his or her business, and 

 condiments and savouries are judiciously introduced. 

 We all know how that pathetic tragi -comedy ended. 

 The Jew and the Scot still kept a corner for the pasty. 

 And after all that past}- never appeared, which is 

 another illustration of the moral as to slips between 

 cup and lip. 



Goldsmith offered the haunch for Reynolds to 

 paint ; and the red or the fallow deer, dead or alive, 

 running afoot in forest or park, swinging from hooks 

 in the sylvan larder, or served at the princely or 

 baronial feast, have played a conspicuous part in 

 English art and poetry. For venison is essentially a 

 British dish, and the cooks and cooking books of 

 France and the Low Countries have very little to 

 say to it. They treat casually of the roebuck with 

 the hare, but take small notice of the red deer. 

 So Weenix seldom introduces a stag in his studies o( 

 game, although the antlers and graceful head would 

 be the crowning triumph of a trophy. That is simply 

 because, except in the far south, the forests are few and 

 far between, and in the north each tract of broken 



