Take a very fat bird by the bill and sprinkle it with salt, take out the entrailles, I mean gizzard, liver, etc., and put it whole in your mouth.  Chew it quickly, and the result will be a juice abundant enough to permeate the whole organ.  You will then enjoy a pleasure unknown to the vulgar.

“Odi profanum vulgus et arceo.”  Horace.

The quail, of all game properly so-called, is the nicest and the most pleasant.  A very fat quail is pleasant both to eat, see, and smell.  Whenever it is either roasted, or served en papillote, a great folly is committed, because its perfume is very volatile, and when ever in contact with a liquid, its flavor is dissolved and lost.

The snipe is a charming bird, but few people know all its charms.  It is in its glory only when it has been cooked under the huntsman’s eyes; and the huntsman must have killed it.  Then the roast is perfected according to rule, and the mouth is inundated with pleasure.

Above the preceding, and above all others, the pheasant should be placed.  Few mortals, however, know exactly how to cook it.

A pheasant eaten only a week after its death is not good as a partridge or a pullet, for its merit consists in its aroma.

Science has considered the expansion of this aroma, experience has utilised science, so that a pheasant ready for the spit is a dish fit for the most exalted gourmands.

In the varieties will be found a recipe for roasting a pheasant, a la Sainte Alliance.  The time has come when this method, hitherto concentrated in a small circle of friends, should be made known for the benefit of humanity.  A pheasant with truffles is not good as one would be apt to think it.  The bird is too dry to actuate the tubercle, and the scent of the one and the perfume of the other when united neutralize each other—­or rather do not suit.

Section VI.  Fish.

Savants, in other respects orthodox, have maintained that ocean was the common cradle of all that exists, and that man himself sprang from the sea and owes his actual habits to the influence of the air, and the mode of life he has been obliged to adopt.

Be this as it may, it is at least certain, that the waters contain an immense quantity of beings of all forms and sizes, which possess vitality in very different proportions, and according to mode very different from that of warm blooded animals.

It is not less true that water has ever presented an immense variety of aliments, and that in the present state of science it introduces to our table the most agreeable variety.

Fish, less nutritious than flesh and more succulent than vegetables, is a mezzo termine, which suits all temperments and which persons recovering from illness may safely eat.

The Greeks and Romans, though they had not made as much progress as we have in the art of seasoning fish, esteemed it very highly, and were so delicate that they could even tell where it had been taken.