26 



THE GAME BREEDER 



GAME COOKERY 



All of our game birds and mammals 

 and fish evidently were intended for 

 food, and it is this fact which makes 

 their killing by sportsmen highly 

 proper. As the game disappeared 

 from our markets and vanished from 

 many regions, where it once abounded, 

 the cooking of this desirable food be- 

 came a lost art in most households; 

 but now that it seems to be evident 

 that game is to be rapidly increased in 

 numbers, under laws intended to en- 

 courage game breeding, game cookery 

 becomes of sufficient importance to re- 

 quire a department in this magazine. 



No land in the world has such a 

 large and desirable assortment of 

 game and game fish as America has. 

 All of the upland birds, the turkeys, 

 grouse and quail, or partridges, are 

 splendid food birds. Many of the wild 

 foul and waders are equally good on 

 the table and some of these are pre- 

 ferred by epicures to the birds of the 

 stubbles and the woods. There are 

 many species of game birds which are 

 not so good as others, and some, which 

 are shot for sport, notably the Ameri- 

 can scoter and the white-winged 

 scoter, commonly known to sea gun- 

 ners as the black coot and white- 

 winged coot, the eiders, and the mer- 

 gansers, or saw-bills, have been re- 

 ferred to as "abominable" food because 

 of the fishy and tough character of 

 their flesh. The young of these birds 

 are, however, usually better than the 

 old birds are, and there are ways of 

 cooking even the old birds so as to 

 make them palatable and, in fact, 

 highly desirable to a hungry gunner, 

 who has only secured this compara- 

 tively undesirable food. I have eaten 

 a very good merganser stew, prepared 

 by a market gunner's wife ; and sports- 

 men, who shoot on salt water, are 

 aware that there are many good re- 

 cipes for cooking these sea-fow) 



The sage grouse, of the Western 

 plains, the second largest grouse in the 

 world, may or may not be highly de- 

 sirable for the table. I have found the 

 young birds always good, when feed- 

 ing on grasshoppers, and there are 



ways of making the old birds palatable 

 as many army officers know. The larger 

 hares, or jack rabbits, should not be 

 despised, when properly cooked, and 

 there are very many ways of cooking 

 these, and also the little cotton tails.: 



Birds of the same species differ 

 much according to their feeding. The 

 delicious, celery-fed, canvas back of 

 Maryland is. almost worthless on some 

 coasts when it procures hardly enough 

 fishy food to keep it alive. Even the 

 little blue-winged teal, the best table 

 duck in the world, "the jewel of the 

 spit" is not so good when taken by the 

 shore as he is when he is feeding on 

 wild rice and acorns, and he may re- 

 quire a different handling in the kitch- 

 en, when he is not feeding just right, 



There are many ways of cooking 

 venison; and in the good old days of 

 game abundance we knew how ta 

 cook and serve the heart of the elk 

 and the buffalo tongue. 



The good recipes for cooking fish 

 are quite as numerous as those which 

 are used for game, big and small, and 

 when we consider hoW many species 

 of game and fish will soon come to the 

 kitchen, and the fact that there are 

 numerous ways of cooking each one. it 

 is evident this department of the 

 magazine can be kept full of good and 

 useful matter for the household for a 

 long time to come. 



We have many excellent recipes,, 

 which our readers soon will have a 

 chance to use, and we shall be glad tO' 

 have all those who have good ones 

 send them for publication. We shall, 

 first of all, discuss the pheasants, the 

 ducks, the deer and the rabbits, since 

 it is evident these will be first made 

 plentiful. / 



We formerly read often about the 

 "hot bird and the cold bottle," but a 

 short time ago it seemed likely that 

 the bottle and the game laws alone 

 would survive. This reminds us thM 

 certain bottles are more proper when 

 served with certain birds than others 

 are; and our knowledge of this im- 

 portant subject well may be revived, 

 for surely we soon can make good /use 

 of it. ' ■ 



