And as to brown sauce, take great care no fat swins at the top, but that it be all smooth alike and about as thick as good cream, and not too taste of one thing more than another. As to pepper and salt, season to your palate, but do not put too much of either, for that will take away the fine flavour of every thing. As to most made dishes, you may put in what you think proper to enlarge it, or make it good; as mushrooms pickled, dried, fresh, or powdered; truffles, morels, cocks-combs stewed, ox palates cut in little bits, artichoke-bottoms, either pickled, fresh boiled, or dried ones softened in warm water, each cut in four pieces, asparagus-tops, the yolks of hard eggs, force-meat balls, &c. The best things to give a sauce tartness, are mushroom-pickle, white walnut-pickle, elder vinegar, or lemon-juice.
CHAP. III.
Read this CHAPTER, and you will find how expensive a French cook's sauce is.
The French way of dressing partridges.
WHEN they are newly pickled and drawn, singe them: you must mince their livers with a bit of butter, some scraped bacon, green truffles, if you have any, parsley, chimbol, salt, pepper, sweet-herbs, and all-spice. The whole being minced together, put it into the inside of your partridges, then stop both ends of them, after which give them a fry in the stew-pan; that being done, spit them, and wrap them up in slices of bacon and paper; then take a stew-pan, and having put in an onion cut into slices, a carrot cut into little bits, with a little oil, give them a few tosses over the fire; them moisten them with gravy, cullis, and a little essence of ham. Put therein half a lemon cut into slices, flour cloves of garlic, a little sweet basil, thyme, a bay-leaf, a little parsley, chimbol, two glasses of white wine, and four of the carcasses of the partridges; let them be pounded, and put them in this sauce. When the fat of your cullis is taken away, be careful to make it relishing; and after your pounded livers are put into your cullis, you must strain them through a sieve. Your partridges being don, take them off; as also take off the bacon and paper, and lay them in your dish with your sauce over them.
This dish I do not recommend; for I think it an odd jumble of trash; by that time the cullis, the essence of ham, and all other ingredients are reckoned, the partridges will come to a
