Grouse

Knead the lemon juice into the butter with seasoning. Wipe the birds inside and out (do not wash them). If buying trussed, prepared birds you will not be able to wipe on the inside.

Divide the butter between the birds, putting a piece inside each. Wrap the bacon over the breast, place the birds in a tin and roast them at 200¡C, gas mark 6, 400¡F for 30-45 minutes, basting occasionally with more butter. About 10 minutes before the end of the cooking time remove the bacon, baste the birds again, dust with flour and return to the oven to complete cooking. The birds should be just cooked, in other words still slightly pink at the joints.

Lightly fry the grouse livers in butter then mash them and spread them onto the slices of toast. Remove the string from the birds and place one on each slice of toast. Garnish with watercress and serve with game chips, bread sauce and fried breadcrumbs.

Bread sauce is one of the few sauces which can claim to have originated in Scotland. To make it place the clove-studded onion in a pan with the bay leaf and the milk. Heat the ingredients together so that the milk absorbs the flavour. Then stir in the bread, cut into pieces, and leave the sauce on one side to soak for an hour.

Return the pan to the heat and bring it back to the boil, remove the onion and cloves and the bay leaf and beat the sauce with a fork until smooth. Stir in the butter, nutmeg and seasoning and pour the sauce into a warm dish for serving.