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Game Stock
The remains of cold roast game, and the bones and trimmings, should be stewed down, and will make good stock. Put some lean ham at the bottom of the stew, and on this lay the game. Just cover all with stock or water, and boil quickly down to a glaze. Add more liquid, allowing a pint of water to every pound of trimmings. Flavour with carrots, turnips, onions, etc., remove the scum as it rises, and stew gently for three or four hours. Strain it off for use.
A second-use stock, built from the carcasses of birds already roasted and eaten. The method is sound and still the best thing to do with a picked-over pheasant, but two instructions repay attention: the initial reduction to a glaze, and the ratio of water to bones.
- The glaze step is the whole pointCovering the bones with a little liquid and boiling it hard until it reduces to a sticky film concentrates the juices and browns them on the pan bottom. That caramelised layer dissolves back into the second addition of water and is what gives game stock its colour and depth. Skipping it leaves a pale, thin broth.
- A pint of water to every pound of trimmingsAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz, about 570 ml, so roughly 1.2 US pints per pound of bones. This is a tight ratio by modern habit and gives a strong, well-bodied stock rather than a light one.
- Lean hamVictorian lean ham was dry-cured and salty. A piece of unsmoked gammon or a ham hock works; use no more than 100-150 g per 2 kg of bones, and salt the finished stock only after reducing, or it will turn harsh.
- "Stew" here means the pan"Put some lean ham at the bottom of the stew" refers to the stewpan, a heavy lidded pot. Any wide, heavy-based stockpot will do; width helps the initial reduction.
- Gentle, not rollingAfter the second addition of liquid the pot should barely tremble, around 85-90C. A hard boil emulsifies fat and makes game stock cloudy and greasy, which matters more here than with beef because game fat tastes strongly.
- Three or four hours is right for birdsThree or four hours suits birds -- poultry and game-bird bones give up most of their gelatin within about four hours, and longer simmering adds little. Venison and hare bones are denser and are usually given longer.
- Watch the vegetablesCarrot, turnip and onion are here for background flavour. The recipe adds them with the second lot of liquid; if you prefer, add them later in the cooking, as turnip can take on a sulphurous note over a long simmer.
- Check for shotWild birds killed with a shotgun often carry pellets in the carcass. Strain through a fine sieve or muslin and discard anything metallic rather than crushing the bones to extract more.
- Yield and keepingTwo roast pheasant carcasses with trimmings, about 1 kg, give roughly 1 litre of finished stock. Cool it quickly, lift the set fat off the top, then refrigerate up to three days or freeze. Reduced further it becomes the glaze used to finish game sauces.
Cassell's belongs to the tradition of the English household dictionary of cookery, arranged alphabetically and written for a kitchen that expected to waste nothing. Game arrived in the Victorian house in bursts, by the brace, either shot by the household or sent as a gift after a shoot, and the calendar of the game laws meant it came in glut and then not at all. A stock like this sits at the bottom of a descending order of use: the bird is roasted and served, the cold remains appear at breakfast or in a salmi, and the frame goes into the pot to become the base of the next week's soups and brown sauces. The lean ham at the bottom of the pan is an old device, where a layer of cured pork under the meat both prevents scorching during the reduction and lends savour of a kind that game bones alone, being lean, cannot supply.