rabbit, kept some time
after it has been killed, and roasted with a stuffing in its belly, eats
very like a hare, to the nature of which it approaches. It is nice,
nourishing food when young, but hard and unwholesome when old. For
sauces, Nos. 287, 298, and 329.

_Pheasant._--(No. 68.)

Requires a smart fire, but not a fierce one. Thirty minutes will roast a
young bird, and forty or fifty a full-grown pheasant. Pick and draw it,
cut a slit in the back of the neck, and take out the craw, but don't cut
the head off; wipe the inside of the bird with a clean cloth, twist the
legs close to the body, leave the feet on, but cut the toes off; don't
turn the head under the wing, but truss it like a fowl, it is much
easier to carve; baste it, butter and froth it, and prepare sauce for it
(Nos. 321 and 329). See the instructions in receipts to roast fowls and
turkeys, Nos. 57 and 58.

_Obs._ We believe the rarity of this bird is its best recommendation;
and the character given it by an ingenious French author is just as good
as it deserves. "Its flesh is naturally tough, and owes all its
tenderness and succulence to the long time it is kept before it is
cooked;" until it is "_bien mortifiee_," it is uneatable[142-+].
Therefore, instead of "_sus per col_," suspend it by one of the long
tail-feathers, and the pheasant's falling from it is the criterion of
its ripeness and readiness for the spit.

Our president of the committee of taste (who is indefatigable in his
endeavours to improve the health, as well as promote the enjoyment, of
his fellow-students in the school of good living, and to whom the
epicure, the economist, and the valetudinarian are equally indebted for
his careful revision of this work, and especially for introducing that
salutary maxim into the kitchen, that "the salubrious is ever a superior
consideration to the savoury," and indeed, the rational epicure only
relishes the latter when entirely subordinate to the former), has
suggested to us, that the detachment of the feather cannot take place
until the body of the bird has advanced more than one degree beyond the
state of wholesome _haut-gout_, and become "_trop mortifiee_;" and that
to enjoy this game in perfection, you must have a brace of birds killed
the same day; these are to be put in suspense as above directed, and
when one of them _drops_, the hour is come that the spit should be
introduced to his companion:--

"_Ultra citraque nequit consistere