Home › The Principles of Cookery › Plovers, Stewed

Plovers, Stewed

Pluck and draw a brace of plovers. Mince the trail, and mix with it two ounces of finely-shredded beef suet, four roasted chestnuts pounded, the yolks of two hard-boiled eggs, and two artichoke bottoms boiled and minced; mix these ingredients thoroughly, and season rather highly with pepper and salt. Fill the birds with the forcemeat, and truss them as if for roasting. Put them side by side in a stewpan just large enough to hold them, pour over them three-quarters of a pint of good brown gravy, and add a glass of port or claret, a table-spoonful of strained lemon-juice, a bunch of parsley, a sprig of thyme, a bay-leaf, three or four mushrooms, or, failing the latter, a table-spoonful of mushroom ketchup, and a little pepper and salt if required. Cover the saucepan closely, and stew gently for half an hour. Take up the birds, and put them in a hot dish. Strain the gravy, and thicken it with a dessert-spoonful of brown thickening. If this is not at hand, a little may be made by mixing equal proportions of flour and butter, and stirring the paste quickly over a gentle fire for three minutes, then putting it into the sauce, and boiling it until smooth. Pour the gravy round the birds, and garnish the dish with plovers' eggs boiled hard, shelled, cut into quarters, and placed round it. Time to stew, half an hour. Probable cost, plovers, 2s. 6d. per brace. Sufficient for two or three persons.