Modern cookery for private families

liver is a delicacy, the handsomer mode of serving these last is to remove the gizzard, which is seldom eaten, then to divide the liver, and to send an equal portion of it with each wing. The whole of a roast fowl may be carved by the directions we have already given for No. 16. No. 18. A PARTRIDGE. [Illustration] When partridges are served to ladies only, or in parties where they are present, it is now customary to take off the heads, to truss the legs short, and to make them appear (in poulterer’s phrase) _all breast_. For gentlemen’s dinners, the heads may be left on or not at choice. The most ready mode of carving a partridge is to press back the legs, then to fix the fork firmly in the inside of the back, and by passing the blade of the knife flat under the lower part of the breast, to raise it, with the wings, entire from the body, from which it easily separates. The breast may then be divided in the middle, as shown by the line from _a_ to _b_ in the engraving here. This is by far the best and handsomest manner of carving a partridge, but when the supply of game at table is small, and it is necessary to serve three persons from the choicer parts of one bird, a not very large wing should be taken off with the leg on either side, in the line from _a_ to _b_ in No. 13, and sufficient of the breast will still remain to send to a third eater. The high game-flavour of the back of a partridge, as well as that of various other birds,[8] is greatly relished by many persons. Footnote 8: A great man o the north eloquently describes that of a grouse as “the most pungent, palate-piercing, wild bitter-sweet.” No. 19. A WOODCOCK. [Illustration] The thigh and back are the most esteemed parts of a woodcock which, being a small bird, may be carved entirely through the centre of the breast and back, or distributed in the same