Roasted Partridges, Pheasants, and Quails
Make a stuffing of fat bacon finely minced, and boiled chestnuts or grated sweet potatoe boiled, mashed, and seasoned with pepper only. Fill the birds with this. Cover them with thin slices of bacon, and wrap them well in young vine leaves. Roast them well, and serve them up in the bacon and vine leaves, to be taken off when they come to table. For company, have orange sauce to eat with them. If you roast pigeons, &c., without a covering of bacon and vine leaves, do them with egg and bread-crumbs all over.
If these birds have a bitter taste when cooked, do not eat them. It is produced by their feeding on laurel berries in winter, when their food is scarce. Laural berries are poisonous, and people have died from eating birds that have fed on them.