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Forcemat for Pheasant
Take the livers of two fowls; see that they are sound, and that the gall has been properly cleared away. Parboil them, and then pound in a mortar, with half a pound of grated ham, cooked, and without fat, three or four truffles, or mushrooms, if the former cannot be had, half a tea-spoonful of minced parsley, and a shallot. Flavour with pepper, salt, and a little nutmeg. Blend with the forcemeat three ounces of butter, and stuff the bird. Time, five minutes to boil livers. Probable cost, exclusive of truffles, 1s. 4d. Sufficient for one pheasant.
A liver-and-ham stuffing for a single roasting pheasant, of the kind Victorian kitchens made in a mortar and modern ones make in a food processor.
- The gall bladderThe instruction to check that "the gall has been properly cleared away" is the hinge of the recipe. Any green-stained patch left on the liver will make the whole forcemeat bitter beyond rescue; trim it out generously along with any sinew or greenish tissue.
- "The livers of two fowls"Two chicken livers, roughly 2-3 oz total. Buy fresh rather than frozen if you can, since thawed livers give up water and slacken the mixture.
- ParboilingFive minutes in simmering water firms the livers enough to pound smoothly. They will still be pink inside, which is expected here, as the forcemeat finishes cooking inside the bird.
- Grated hamHalf a pound of lean cooked ham, grated on the coarse side of a box grater or pulsed briefly in a processor. Modern wet-cured supermarket ham tends to be moister than the dry-cured ham the book assumes, and salt levels vary widely between brands, so hold back on the added salt until you have tasted the mixture.
- Truffles or mushroomsThree or four fresh truffles is a quantity almost nobody will match; the book's own substitution of mushrooms is the sensible route, though it gives a count rather than a weight -- three or four large mushrooms, chopped and dried out in a dry pan until they stop weeping, keeps the stuffing from going soggy. A spoonful of truffle-scented oil or a few rehydrated dried mushrooms adds depth.
- BindingThree ounces of butter, softened rather than melted, is the only binder. There is no egg or breadcrumb, so the forcemeat sets by chilling; refrigerate it for half an hour before stuffing so it holds its shape.
- Cooking the stuffed birdBecause the livers go in barely cooked, the centre of the stuffing needs to reach 165F/74C. Stuff loosely and check with a probe pushed into the cavity, not just into the breast. A large pheasant will take roughly 50-60 minutes at 400F/200C; if the stuffing lags behind the meat, scoop it out and finish it in a dish.
- Yield and costEnough for one pheasant, which serves two generously. The "1s. 4d." is the book's own estimate of the ingredient cost, exclusive of truffles, and has no modern equivalent worth quoting.
Forcemeat comes from the French farce, a stuffing, and the word travelled into English cookery as "farce" before being reshaped into the more literal-sounding "forcemeat" by the late seventeenth century. A Victorian cook was expected to know a repertoire of forcemeats and match one to the bird: veal and suet for a boiled fowl, chestnut for turkey, and a rich liver-and-ham mixture for the drier flesh of pheasant. The pairing of poultry liver, cured ham and truffle is close to the gratin forcemeat used across the period for game pies and terrines, which may be why the book offers mushrooms as the fallback without embarrassment: truffles were beyond many households, and the printed cost figure pointedly excludes them.