Marion Harland's Complete Cook Book: A Practical and Exhaustive Manual of Cookery and Housekeeping

in the gravy before this goes into the pie. Pie of small birds I wish I could preface the recipe with the information that English sparrows are available for this purpose. If not suppressed they are likely to lessen the supply of edible small birds and of warblers of all kinds to a degree inconceivable by those who have not watched their achievements in this line. Blackbirds, ricebirds and snipe may be used in families or as neighbors in the manufacture of our dish. Clean and stew the birds for half-an-hour in weak stock. Let them get perfectly cold in this gravy; take out, put an oyster in the body of each. Arrange around the inside of your bake-dish, the necks all against the rim, the tails pointing toward the center. Put a bit of butter upon each breast and sprinkle very finely minced salt pork over all. Thicken the gravy with browned flour, season well and pour upon the birds. Cover with a good crust, cut a slit in the middle, and bake, covered, half-an-hour. Then brown. Quail pie Joint as you would a chicken for fricassee, cover the baking-dish bottom with thin slices of streaky bacon, first partially boiled to extract the salt; cover with a good white sauce, a few mushrooms, or a little mushroom catsup, and some chopped parsley, then with puff-paste. Cut a slit in the middle; bake, covered, and slowly, one hour. Uncover and brown. A combination game pie Wild pigeons and quails, ricebirds, snipe, woodcock—in fact, any small edible birds—may be blended in this. Clean the birds and, if tough, stew them in weak stock. If they are large—that is, too large for a whole bird to be served for one portion—cut them in halves through the breastbone. If the birds are young and tender they may be browned in hot butter; first dredging them with flour, instead of parboiling. Arrange them in a deep, round baking-dish with the breasts up and the feet all pointing toward the center. Make a gravy of the stock in which they were parboiled, season well with