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PHEASANT, BOUDINS OF (a la Richelieu)

Pick the meat from a cold pheasant. Carefully remove the skin and sinews, and pound the flesh in a mortar to a smooth paste. Supposing there to be twelve ounces of pheasant-meat, mix with it twelve ounces of pounded potatoes, or eight ounces of panada (see PANADA), and six ounces of fresh butter. Mix these ingredients thoroughly, pound them together, and season rather highly with salt, cayenne, and powdered mace. Bind the mixture together with the unbeaten yolks of five eggs added one at a time, the whites of two, two table-spoonfuls of white sauce, and, last of all, two table-spoonfuls of boiled onions chopped small. As it is very important that the preparation should be as light and spongy as possible, it is well to test a small quantity by making it up into a ball and poaching it in hot water, so that if it is not of the proper consistency, it may be made so before the whole is cooked. If not firm enough, more eggs should be added. If too firm, add a small quantity of water. Spread the forcemeat out on a dish, and make it up into small cutlets, about three inches long, two inches wide, and a quarter of an inch thick. Drop these carefully into very hot water, and poach them gently for a few minutes. The water should not be allowed to boil, or the boudins will be spoilt. Take them up, drain well, let them get cold, then dip them into egg and bread-crumbs, and fry in hot butter until they are lightly browned. Serve in a circle on a hot dish, and send some good gravy to table in a tureen. The gravy may be made as follows. Peel and slice four onions. Fry them in butter until they are lightly browned, dredge an ounce of flour over them, and pour upon them half a pint of stock, or, failing this, a tea-spoonful of Bovril dissolved in half a pint of boiling water. Add a glassful of sherry or claret, the bones of the pheasant broken into small pieces, and a little pepper and salt. Simmer the sauce over a gentle fire for twenty minutes, strain through a sieve, and it is ready for use. Time, four or five minutes to simmer the boudins. To be fried in hot fat until they are lightly browned. Probable cost of pheasants, 3s. each when in full season. Sufficient boudins made from the flesh of a moderate-sized pheasant for six or eight persons.