Croquets may be made of cold sweet-breads, or of cold veal mixed with ham or tongue.
Rissoles are made of the same ingredients, well mixed, and beaten smooth in a mortar. Make a fine paste, roll it out, and cut it into round cakes. Then lay some of the mixture on one half of the cake, and fold over the other upon it, in the shape of a half-moon. Close and crimp the edges nicely, and fry the rissoles in butter. They should be of a light brown on both sides. Drain them and send them to table dry.
Cover the bottom and sides of a deep dish with a thick paste. Having cut up your chickens, and seasoned them to your taste with salt, pepper, mace and nutmeg, put them in, and lay on the top several pieces of butter rolled in flour. Fill up the dish about two-thirds with cold water. Then lay on the top crust, notching it handsomely. Cut a slit in the top, and stick into it an ornament of paste made in the form of a tulip. Bake it in a moderate oven.
It will be much improved by the addition of a quarter of a hundred oysters; or by interspersing the pieces of chicken with slices of cold boiled ham, in which case use no other salt.
You may add also some yolks of eggs boiled hard.
A duck pie may be made in the same manner. A rabbit pie also.
Take a pair of large fine fowls. Cut them up, wash the pieces, and season them with pepper only. Make a good paste in the proportion of a pound and a half of minced suet to three pounds of flour. Let there be plenty of paste, as it is always much liked by the eaters of pot pie. Roll out the paste not very thin, and cut most of it into long squares. Butter the sides of a pot, and line them with paste nearly to the top. Lay slices of cold ham at the bottom of the pot, and then the pieces of fowl, interspersed all through with squares of paste, and potatoes pared and quartered. Pour in a quart of water. Cover the whole with a lid of paste, having a slit in the centre, through which the gravy will bubble up. Boil it steadily for two hours. Half an hour before you take it up, put in through the hole in the centre of the crust, some bits of butter rolled in flour, to thicken the gravy. When done, put the pie on a large dish, and pour the gravy over it.