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Game, Puree Of
Take the remains of cold game; pick off all the meat, and put the skin, gristle, and bones into a saucepan, with a bunch of thyme, a stick of celery, a breakfast-cupful of stock, and a lump of butter rolled in flour. Simmer gently until reduced one-half. Remove the scum as it rises. Put the meat into a mortar with a lump of butter, a little pepper and salt, and a spoonful of gravy. Pound it to a smooth paste, and rub it through a coarse sieve. Mix it with the gravy and a little cream, stir it over the fire till hot, and serve with croquettes of potatoes round the dish. Time, about one hour and a half to prepare. Probable cost, 6d., exclusive of the cold game. Puree made with one pound of game, sufficient for three persons.
A leftover-game dish from the era when a roast pheasant or partridge was expected to yield two more meals. The method is sound; only the equipment and a few measures need translating.
- The hinge: reduce, then never boil the creamThe flavour comes entirely from reducing the bone stock by half — do that patiently and skim, or the puree tastes of nothing but butter. Once the cream goes in, keep it below a simmer; boiling will split the sauce and tighten the pounded meat into grains.
- Breakfast-cupfulA breakfast cup is roughly 10 fl oz, so about 1¼ US cups of stock. Reduced by half you are left with something over half a cup of concentrated gravy, which is all this quantity of meat needs.
- Mortar and sieveA food processor does the pounding in seconds, but the sieving still matters: game is full of sinew and a coarse sieve or drum sieve is what makes the difference between a puree and a paste. Push it through with a plastic scraper or the back of a ladle.
- Butter rolled in flourThis is beurre manié — equal weights of soft butter and flour worked together, roughly a tablespoon of each here. Added at the start it thickens the stock as it reduces; whisk it in off a hard boil so it disperses.
- Which gamePheasant, partridge, grouse, wild duck, hare or rabbit all work. Older, darker birds give a better result than young ones, since the puree wants concentrated flavour rather than delicacy. Any strong-tasting bird such as grouse is best cut with a milder one or with a little more cream.
- Cold cooked meat, reheated onceThe meat is already cooked; it goes into the mortar cold and is warmed through at the end. Bring the finished puree to a proper steaming heat — 165F throughout — and serve it straight away rather than holding it warm.
- Croquettes of potatoesMashed potato bound with egg yolk, shaped, crumbed and fried. Duchesse potatoes piped and baked at 400F give much the same effect with less work, and the point is the same: something crisp and starchy against a very soft, very rich centre.
- Yield and timingA pound of picked meat serves three as the book says, though as a first course it will stretch to four. The hour and a half is realistic and mostly unattended — the stock reduction accounts for most of it.
Purees of this kind belong to the nineteenth-century English adaptation of French kitchen practice, where a purée meant meat or vegetables pounded and sieved to a uniform smoothness — the same discipline that produced quenelles and forcemeats. Before mechanical sieves and processors this was genuinely laborious work. The costing of sixpence, exclusive of the game, follows from the fact that the bird is a leftover: the household is being told what it would cost to make a second dinner out of the remains.