Make this the same as the filling for chicken pie.
Singe and wash the duck, and then wipe it. Season it with salt and pepper, and put half an onion in the body. Truss it, and dredge lightly with flour. Roast it in a hot oven for half an hour, and serve it with a hot currant sauce. This time will cook the duck rare, which is the proper way to cook all kinds of ducks. If, however, you prefer to have it well done, stuff it, and treat it exactly like roast chicken.
1 grouse. 1 small onion. 2 tablespoonfuls of soft butter. 1 ounce of fat salt pork. Salt, pepper, flour.
Cut off the neck and wings close to the body. Cut off the feet in the joints, or just below; see that all the feathers are removed; then draw the bird and wash quickly in cold water. Peel the onion and cut it into four parts. Put these into the body of the bird and then truss it. Season with salt and pepper. Rub the butter over the breast and legs of the grouse, then dredge thickly with flour. Have the pork cut in thin slices and lay it over the breast, fastening it with small skewers or wooden toothpicks. Rest the grouse on its back on a tin plate and place it in a hot oven. Cook for half an hour, having the oven quite hot the first fifteen minutes, and then reducing the heat. When the bird is done, remove the skewers. Pour half a pint of bread sauce on a hot dish, and place the bird on this, breast up. Sprinkle fried crumbs over the bird and sauce, and garnish with a few sprays of parsley.
Prepare and serve the same as grouse; but as it is white meat it must be well done. Cook it for forty-five minutes, and baste it every ten minutes with a gill of hot stock or water, in which have been melted two tablespoonfuls of butter.
Cook and serve this exactly the same as grouse, except that it should be cooked but twenty minutes, being smaller than grouse.
All birds that are to be broiled must be split in the back; the necks must be cut off, the birds wiped, and the legs drawn up over the breast. This will give a compact form to the bird. Now season with salt. Spread soft butter over the breast and legs, and then dredge thickly with flour. Put in the double-broiler and cook over clear coals, having the buttered and floured side toward the fire at first, that the two materials may unite and form a paste on the bird. Cook quail or squab for ten minutes, and smaller birds six or eight. Partridge and grouse may be cooked in the same way, but the grouse should be cooked for twenty minutes and the partridge thirty. Serve the small birds on slices of crisp toast.