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GROUSE (a la Financiere)
Boil the livers of the grouse for ten minutes, and pound them in a mortar, with three ounces of butter, a shallot, finely minced, half a salt-spoonful of salt, and the same of pepper, two or three grates of nutmeg, one table-spoonful of bread-crumbs, and four mushrooms. Stuff the grouse with this forcemeat, truss and roast, and baste them liberally. Put half a pint of good brown sauce (see GRAVY ESPAGNOLE) into a stewpan. Add a quarter of a pint of stewed mushrooms, and a pinch of cayenne. Let all boil up together, and serve with the game. Time to roast the grouse, from twenty to thirty minutes. Probable cost, variable, from 2s. 6d. to 6s. 6d. the brace. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A late-Victorian roast game bird with a liver forcemeat and a mushroom-flecked espagnole. The technique is sound; most of the work of translation is in the units, the sauce and the doneness.
- MeasuresImperial measures: half a pint of brown sauce is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups, and a quarter pint of mushrooms about 5 fl oz. A salt-spoonful is roughly a quarter teaspoon, so the seasoning here is half that of salt and of pepper.
- The sauce is the real projectSauce espagnole is a brown roux moistened with veal or game stock and reduced for hours. A well-reduced game or veal stock thickened lightly, or a good demi-glace, gives the same effect in an evening. Deglaze the roasting pan into it before serving.
- Bard the birdsGrouse carries almost no fat and the instruction to "baste them liberally" is not decorative. Tie a sheet of pork fat or streaky bacon over the breast, or the 20 to 30 minutes will dry it out entirely.
- Oven heatThe recipe gives no oven temperature at all; a hot oven, around 425F, suits the timing. Twenty to thirty minutes suits a whole red grouse of about 1 lb, and the breast is traditionally served rosy — around 130 to 135F at the thickest point. Game roasted to well done in this style goes livery and tough.
- LiversTen minutes' boiling firms the livers so they pound into a paste rather than a purée. Grouse livers are tiny; if your birds arrive without giblets, chicken liver is a workable substitute, though milder, and a food processor replaces the mortar.
- Mushrooms"Four mushrooms" means small field or cultivated buttons, perhaps 2 oz. The "stewed mushrooms" for the sauce are mushrooms cooked down in butter and stock, not tinned.
- Sourcing the birdBritish red grouse is wild-shot only and sold in season from 12 August; it is not farmed and is hard to match elsewhere. Partridge, quail or squab will take the same forcemeat, with times adjusted down for the smaller birds.
- YieldThe original claims four or five persons, though it never says how many birds are used; the price is simply quoted by the brace. Reckon one bird per person if grouse is the centre of the meal.
À la financière was one of the codified garnishes of nineteenth-century French professional cookery — classically truffles, cockscombs and kidneys, quenelles, olives and mushrooms bound in a Madeira-scented espagnole — and in English domestic books the name is often used more loosely, for little more than a rich brown sauce with mushrooms, as here. The dish sits in a book published for middle-class households that wanted restaurant French vocabulary at domestic scale. The bird itself was seasonal and expensive: the red grouse season opened on 12 August, and the quoted range of 2s. 6d. to 6s. 6d. the brace reflects a variable wild game market. Stuffing a game bird with a forcemeat of its own pounded liver is older than the French naming, and liver on toast set beneath the roasting bird remains a common treatment of grouse and woodcock in Britain.