230 THE COOKERY OF THE PHEASANT 



have regretted on receiving gifts of game our previous 

 liberality to the gamekeeper ; for that functionary's idea 

 of gratitude and friendship is sure to take the form of 

 selecting the cocks in the finest plumage which would 

 gladden the soul of a birdstuffer. The best way to 

 deal with them is to hang them up indefinitely, and 

 then when they threaten to take French leave of the 

 hooks, to smother them under pie crust in mush- 

 rooms and bacon fat. With that treatment even the 

 tough drumsticks become practicable, but we need 

 scarcely say that the fumet of the pheasant has 

 evaporated. Or there is another way, as our cookery 

 books have it, which we have often adopted in the 

 Highlands with satisfaction, when going in for mixed 

 shooting. The patriarchal pheasants and the mus- 

 cular old blackcocks who fell crashing through the 

 brushwood, awaking all the echoes in the depths of 

 the precipitous glens, we found to make admirable 

 cock-a-leekie. In England, where cock-a-leekie is 

 almost as unfamiliar as swallow-nest soup, they may 

 of course be consigned to the stock-pot as the last 

 resort. 



But with the pheasant, whether old or young, 

 everything depends on keeping and hanging. Brillal- 

 Savarin, as a master of gastronomic philosophy, 

 speaks with no uncertain sound, and puts the matter 



