When you have drawn the ducks, shred one onion and a few sage leaves, put them into the ducks with pepper and salt, spit and dust them with flour, and baste them with lard; if your fire be very hot, they will roast in twenty minutes; and the quicker they are roasted, the better they will taste.  Just before you take them from the spit, dust them with flour and baste them.  Get ready some gravy made of the gizzards and pinions, a large blade of mace, a few pepper corns, a spoonful of catsup, a tea-spoonful of lemon pickle; strain it and pour it on the ducks, and send onion sauce in a boat.

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To boil A turkey with oyster sauce.

Grate a loaf of bread, chop a score or more of oysters fine, add nutmeg, pepper and salt to your taste, mix it up into a light forcemeat with a quarter of a pound of butter, a spoonful or two of cream, and three eggs; stuff the craw with it, and make the rest into balls and boil them; sew up the turkey, dredge it well with flour, put it in a kettle of cold water, cover it, and set it over the fire; as the scum begins to rise, take it off, let it boil very slowly for half an hour, then take off your kettle and keep it closely covered; if it be of a middle size, let it stand in the hot water half an hour, the steam being kept in, will stew it enough, make it rise, keep the skin whole, tender, and very white; when you dish it, pour on a little oyster sauce, lay the balls round, and serve it up with the rest of the sauce in a boat.

N.B.  Set on the turkey in time, that it may stew as above; it is the best way to boil one to perfection.  Put it over the fire to heat, just before you dish it up.

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To make sauce for A turkey.

As you open the oysters, put a pint into a bowl, wash them out of their own liquor, and put them in another bowl; when the liquor has settled, pour it off into a sauce pan with a little white gravy, and a tea-spoonful of lemon pickle—­thicken it with flour and a good lump of butter; boil it three or four minutes, put in a spoonful of good cream, add the oysters, keep shaking them over the fire till they are quite hot, but don’t let them boil, for it will make them hard and appear small.

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To roast A turkey.

Make the forcemeat thus:  take the crumb of a loaf of bread, a quarter of a pound of beef suet shred fine, a little sausage meat or veal scraped and pounded very fine, nutmeg, pepper, and salt to your taste; mix it lightly with three eggs, stuff the craw with it, spit it, and lay it down a good distance from the fire, which should be clear and brisk; dust and baste it several times with cold lard; it makes the froth stronger than basting it with the hot out of the dripping pan, and makes the turkey rise better; when it is enough, froth it up as before, dish it, and pour on the same gravy as for the boiled turkey, or bread sauce; garnish with lemon and pickles, and serve it up; if it be of a middle size, it will require one hour and a quarter to roast.