Pheasants
Roast two pheasants, and as soon as they come off the spit, cut the meat from the breasts by making an incision in the shape of a heart; then cut the meat in small dice and mix with it two gravy-spoonfuls of reduced Bechamel sauce and two dozen mushrooms; a couple of black truffles and a small piece of red tongue should be also cut into dice and mixed with the pheasants. With this preparation fill up the breasts of the pheasants, smooth them over with the blade of a knife, and then cover them with bread crumbs fried of a light brown color; set the pheasants in the oven to keep warm, and when about to send them to the table place them in a dish side by side, pour round them a white ragout of cockscombs, mushrooms and truffles, and serve.
This is a French restaurant dish transplanted into an American household book: two roast pheasants, boned out at the breast, stuffed with their own diced meat in sauce, and reassembled. The hinge is the roasting — pheasant is lean and turns to string if taken much past done, and here it gets a second stint in the oven.
- No spit neededRoast the birds in a hot oven, around 400–425F, breast up and well barded with bacon or buttered paper. A 2–2 1/2 lb bird will want roughly 35–45 minutes, checked early; poultry is safest taken to 165F in the thickest part of the breast, though cooks after a juicier breast often pull nearer 160F and rest the bird.
- Pheasant is leanFarmed pheasant today is milder than the wild birds this book assumed, and usually plumper rather than leaner in build. It still has very little fat, so any overcooking is permanent; the reheating step at the end should be brief and at 300F or lower, just to warm through.
- Gravy-spoonfulA serving or gravy spoon of the period is usually reckoned at about 2 tablespoons, though the measure was never fixed; on that reading "two gravy-spoonfuls" is roughly 1/4 cup of reduced bechamel — enough to bind the diced meat, not to sauce it. The bechamel wants to be thick.
- Red tongueCured, brine-pickled ox or beef tongue, sold cooked and pink. Deli-sliced pickled tongue works; a slice of good cooked ham is the usual modern stand-in for the color and salt.
- CockscombsCockscombs are essentially unobtainable outside a few specialist butchers. Build the ragout from mushrooms, truffle and quenelles in a light veloute, or drop the combs without comment.
- TrufflesTwo black truffles in a book of this period meant fresh winter truffles or good tinned ones in their own juice. A modern jar of truffle peelings, or a small fresh truffle shaved rather than diced, is the honest substitute; truffle oil is not.
- The crumb coatFry fresh breadcrumbs in butter until light brown and quite dry before pressing them onto the smoothed filling, or they will sag. This is a coating for looks and texture, not a browning to be finished under heat.
- YieldTwo pheasants dressed this way serve four generously as a main course, or six as part of a longer menu.
The dish belongs to the French grande cuisine that American cookbooks of about 1900 borrowed wholesale for their game and entree chapters. The finish is a white ragout of cockscombs, mushrooms and truffles, and cockscombs were then a normal byproduct of poultry dressing rather than the curiosity they have become. Pheasant itself reached the American table largely through releases of ring-necked birds from China, generally traced to the 1880s and after, which put the birds into farmland across the Northeast and Pacific Northwest; before that, pheasant on a menu generally meant an imported or estate-raised bird. A recipe like this one, calling for truffles, pickled tongue and a spit, tells you plainly that it was written for a household with a cook in it.