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Pheasants, with Puree of Celery
Truss the pheasants for boiling, braise them in some good stock, garnished with a carrot, an onion stuck with two cloves, and a garnished fagot of parsley; when done, drain them upon a napkin, dish them up, and pour over them a white puree of celery; garnish round with a border of potato croquettes and serve.
A skeleton instruction of the kind Victorian and Edwardian cookery books wrote for cooks who already knew the component preparations. Two of the three elements — the celery purée and the croquettes — are assumed knowledge, and the braise is the only part actually described.
- The hinge: braise, don't boilThe bird is trussed "for boiling" (legs drawn in close to the body, wings pinned, so it holds a compact shape) but then cooked in a covered pan with only enough stock to come a third to halfway up. Pheasant has almost no fat, and a full boil dries and shreds the breast.
- Time and temperatureA 2 to 2.5 lb farmed hen pheasant needs roughly 45 minutes to an hour, covered, at a bare simmer; the recipe assumes stove-top braising, though a low oven (around 325F) does the same work. Take it to about 165F at the thickest part of the thigh; older wild birds can want half again as long.
- Garnished fagotA bundle of herbs tied with string — parsley stalks, thyme, a bay leaf — what a modern recipe calls a bouquet garni. "Garnished" here means dressed or made up, not decorative.
- A white puree of celeryCelery or celeriac stewed soft in stock or milk, sieved, and bound with a white sauce or velouté and a little cream, seasoned with salt, white pepper and lemon. Celeriac gives the smoother, sweeter result; ordinary celery needs thorough sieving to catch the strings.
- Drain upon a napkinLiterally set the birds on a folded linen cloth for a minute so surface liquid is absorbed. Skip it and the braising stock thins the sauce on the platter. A rack over a tray does the same job.
- Carving before saucingWhole braised pheasant is awkward at table. The recipe dishes the birds whole and masks them with the puree, but removing the trussing string, taking off legs and breasts and reassembling them on the dish before saucing makes it easier to serve.
- CroquettesDuchesse potato — dry mashed potato enriched with egg yolk and butter — shaped into cylinders, breaded and fried. They can be formed and crumbed hours ahead and fried while the birds rest.
- YieldTwo pheasants serve four generously as a main course, or six if the purée and croquettes are plentiful and other courses follow.
- Wild birdsShot game may carry lead pellets and bruised, blood-darkened flesh near the wound. Feel the breast and thighs over before trussing.
Pheasant appears in the game chapter of many English-language household books of this period, and it is often said to have been the one "wild" bird a middle-class kitchen could reliably obtain eulterers in season, and, by many accounts, cheap enough after a big shoot that it stood in for luxury without being ruinous. The treatment here is French in structure rather than English: braising in stock with a carrot, a clove-stuck onion and a herb bundle, then masking the bird in a white purée, is the method of the professional kitchen brigade, and the pairing of celery with pheasant is a long-standing one in that tradition, celery's bitterness said to cut the dry, faintly livery flavour of the flesh. The clove-stuck onion, or oignon piqué, is generally traced to the classic French stock and béchamel preparations, and survives in restaurant practice today. The terse phrasing — no quantities, no times, no recipe for the purée or the croquettes — is characteristic of books that expected their reader to work with the rest of the volume open beside them.