suet, salt and white pepper to taste, 4 lbs. of the neck of pork, 1
dessertspoonful of powdered sage.
_Mode_.--Well dry the flour, mince the suet, and put these with the
butter into a saucepan, to be made hot, and add a little salt. When
melted, mix it up into a stiff paste, and put it before the fire with a
cloth over it until ready to make up; chop the pork into small pieces,
season it with white pepper, salt, and powdered sage; divide the paste
into rather small pieces, raise it in a round or oval form, fill with
the meat, and bake in a brick oven. These pies will require a fiercer
oven than those in the preceding recipe, as they are made so much
smaller, and consequently do not require so soaking a heat.
_Time_.--If made small, about 1-1/2 hour.
_Seasonable_ from September to March.
SWINEHERDS OF ANTIQUITY.--From the prejudice against the hog
among the ancients, those who tended them formed an isolated
class, and were esteemed as the outcasts of society. However
much the flesh of the animal was esteemed by the Greeks and
Romans, yet the swineherd is not mentioned by either the classic
writers or the poets who, in ancient Greece and Rome, painted
rural life. We have no descriptions of gods or heroes descending
to the occupation of keeping swine. The swineherd is never
introduced into the idyls of Theocritus, nor has Virgil admitted
him into his eclogues. The Eumaeus of Homer is the only
exception that we have of a swineherd meeting with favour in the
eyes of a poet of antiquity. This may be accounted for, on the
supposition that the prejudices of the Egyptians relative to
this class of men, extended to both Greece and Italy, and
imparted a bias to popular opinion.
TO MAKE SAUSAGES.
(_Author's Oxford Recipe_.)