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Game, Hashed
Take the remains of any cold game. It will be all the better for being under-done. Cut it into convenient-sized pieces, and cover them, to keep them from getting dry and dusty. Put the trimmings into a saucepan, with a breakfast-cupful of stock, a bundle of sweet herbs, half a dozen peppercorns, and an onion stuck with two cloves; thicken with a dessert-spoonful of flour, and a little butter, add a salt-spoonful of salt, and simmer gently by the side of the fire till the sauce coats the spoon. Strain the mixture, add a glass of port wine, put in the pieces of game, and let it simmer for ten minutes longer. It must not boil. Put the game on a hot dish, pour the gravy over, and garnish with toasted bread. Care should be taken to remove the soft part inside moor game, if it is very high, or it will make the hash bitter. Time, three-quarters of an hour. Probable cost, 4d., exclusive of the cold game and wine. Sufficient, one pound of meat for two persons.
A Victorian second-day dish built on the sound principle that already-cooked meat should be warmed through in its sauce, never cooked again. Almost everything here works unchanged; the measurements need translating.
- Never let it boilThe instruction in the original is the point of the recipe. Cooked game reheated at a boil quickly goes stringy and dry. Keep the pan at a bare shiver, around 180F, for the final ten minutes.
- The measuresA breakfast-cupful is roughly 8-10 fl oz, so call it a generous cup of stock. A dessert-spoonful is 2 teaspoons; a salt-spoonful is about a quarter teaspoon. A "glass" of port here means a wineglass, 2 to 3 fl oz.
- By the side of the fireOn a coal range the flank of the fire gave a steady low heat. The equivalent is your smallest burner at its lowest setting, or a heat diffuser.
- The trimmings sauceBones, skin and scraps simmered with stock, herbs, peppercorns and a clove-stuck onion make the gravy; it is strained before the meat goes in. It will reduce as it simmers, so start with the full cup. (The three-quarters of an hour given is the time for the whole dish, not for the sauce alone.)
- ThickeningTwo teaspoons of flour with a little butter into a cup of stock is a light coating sauce, not a gravy that stands up. Work the flour and butter to a paste and whisk it in off the heat to avoid lumps.
- "The soft part inside moor game"Moor game is red grouse, traditionally roasted with the trail (the intestine) left in to baste the bird. In a well-hung bird that trail turns bitter and acrid, and Cassell's is right that it must come out before the meat goes into a sauce.
- "Very high"Victorian game was hung far longer than most people now tolerate. Modern butchered game is hung briefly and refrigerated, so the bitterness warning is largely moot, but check for shot pellets while cutting the meat up.
- Underdone meatThe note that cold game is better underdone presumably reflects the ten minutes it will spend in hot sauce. If your leftover birds were roasted through, cut the reheat to five minutes and just warm them.
- Yield and servingA pound of picked meat serves two. The toasted bread garnish means pieces of plain toast set round the dish, there to soak up a thin sauce.
Hashes of this kind were the backbone of Victorian household economy: a roast appeared hot at one meal, cold at the next, and hashed or minced at the third, with the bones and trimmings pressed into service as the sauce for their own meat. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery was compiled for exactly that kind of middle-class kitchen, and its habit of quoting a probable cost, here fourpence exclusive of the game and the wine, tells you the book expected to be read by someone accounting for every shilling. The reference to moor game places the dish in the shooting season: red grouse from the northern moors reached city tables in quantity after the twelfth of August, and a brace roasted for a dinner party would leave enough for a hash the following day. Hanging game until it was "high" was standard practice of the period and a matter of some pride, the tenderising and flavour-building step that refrigeration and quick modern butchery have largely displaced.