306 THE COOKERY OF VENISON 



directs you to cut the meat into slices, spit them 

 and powder with salt and ginger. The ' side of high 

 grease ' is to be mangled in similar fashion ; but as if 

 the scorched slices had not suffered sufficiently, they 

 are to be subsequently boiled in red wine. Nothing 

 could well have been more ingeniously devised to 

 get rid of the fat and let those juices evaporate which 

 it is the aspiration of modern cookery to retain. The 

 recipe might pass well enough for making kabobs 

 in an Eastern desert ; but the Orientals have the 

 excuse of a scarcity of fuel. For a ' mortice of 

 flesche,' you are to pound up the venison with flesh 

 of hens, and seethe it and thicken with bread crumbs 

 and colour with saffron and boil again, and thicken 

 again with yoke of eggs and then send -up the 

 suspicious mess. But to do those ingenious medi- 

 aeval artists bare justice, they let no part of the 

 animal be wasted. The liver and kidneys, we admit, 

 are excellent, and black puddings of the venison are 

 not to be despised. But the Umbles or Numbles, 

 which were much in favour, simply meant the entrails 

 in general. 



' To make numbles tak hert middrif and kidney 

 and hew them smalle and prise out the blood and 

 sethe them in water and ale and colour it with brown 

 bred or with blod and fors it with canell and galin- 



