THE COOKERY OF THE PHEASANT 261 



averred she had prepared with her own hands for her 

 brother-in-law, Mr. Pitt. Whoever made that re- 

 chauffe, it must have been a good one, a:nd not un- 

 worthy of Lord Steyne's White Hermitage, which 

 brought a flush into the pale cheeks of the member 

 for Queen's Crawley. All you have to do is to 

 cut up the cold game neatly ; see that there is some- 

 thing to make an abundance of stock or artificial 

 sauce — fat pork will do well enough, in the absence of 

 anything better — and then add brown sherry and lemon 

 juice to suit the taste. Or should there be half a bottle 

 of claret or Burgundy left over from the dinner of the 

 day before, it will make a most satisfactory substitute for 

 the sherry. For the souffle you pound the pheasant 

 in a mortar, moisten with gravy, season with pepper 

 or spice, and by passing the whole through a fine 

 sieve, deprive the bird of the least particle of its full 

 natural flavour. The salmi may want character, and 

 yet be savoury enough ; but the souffle is what the 

 novelists call ' sweetly pretty,' and consequently sadly 

 insipid. Very much more may be done with the vol- 

 au-vent, in which sections of the fresh pheasant are 

 inclosed in walls of golden crust, with its native 

 odours and savours intermingled with those of truffles, 

 oysters, mushrooms, cockscombs, crayfish, soft roes, 

 and, in fact, anything of the sort you please. When 



