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GROUSE (a l'Ecossaise)
When the birds are plucked and drawn, put three ounces of butter inside each, but not in the crop; put them down to a clear fire, and baste plentifully. Lay a slice of toast in the pan under them a few minutes before taking the birds from the fire. Parboil the liver, pound it in a mortar, with a little butter, salt, and cayenne, and spread it on the toast instead of butter only. Time, about half an hour to roast the grouse. Probable cost, variable. Sufficient, a brace for five or six persons.
A spit-roasting recipe translated easily enough to an oven, provided you treat the toast as the point of the dish rather than a garnish.
- The hinge: the toastThe bread sits in the dripping pan directly beneath the birds to absorb the fat and juices. In an oven, set the birds on a rack over a shallow tin and slide the bread in underneath for the last few minutes only, as the recipe directs; in any longer and it dries and hardens rather than soaking.
- Fire to ovenA "clear fire" means one burned down to steady radiant heat with no flame or smoke. The book gives no temperature; a hot oven, in the region of 425F, is the nearest modern equivalent, with frequent basting as the recipe directs.
- Time and donenessHalf an hour at that heat suits a large bird; a young grouse of about 1 lb wants 22 to 30 minutes. Red grouse is conventionally served pink, around 135F at the thickest part of the breast, and it toughens quickly past that. Rest 10 minutes before carving.
- Three ounces of butter is a lotThree ounces per bird is roughly six tablespoons, more than most cooks want now. An ounce inside each bird plus barding the breast with bacon or a buttered paper achieves the same protection for a very lean carcass.
- "Not in the crop"The crop is the pouch at the base of the neck, opened during drawing. The likeliest reason for the warning is that butter packed there would simply leak away instead of staying in the body cavity.
- The liver pasteGame birds today are rarely sold with the offal, so ask the supplier to keep it or substitute a little chicken liver. Parboil means a brief simmer of 2 to 3 minutes only; longer and it goes grainy and refuses to pound smooth.
- YieldA brace is two birds. Five or six people is a Victorian estimate assuming several other courses; two birds realistically serve two generously or four as part of a larger meal.
- Buying"Probable cost, variable" still holds. Grouse cannot be farmed, so it appears only in season and at a price set by the shooting; hung birds are usually sold plucked and drawn on request.
À l'Écossaise means simply "in the Scottish manner," and for grouse the attribution is literal: the red grouse of the recipe is a bird of the heather moors of Scotland and northern England, and unlike pheasant or partridge it is generally said to resist rearing in captivity, so effectively every one that reaches a kitchen has been shot wild. Its season opens on 12 August, a date traced to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century game legislation and still known as the Glorious Twelfth. Cassell's gives the price only as "variable." The method here — roasting the bird whole over a clear fire with a slice of toast beneath to catch the fat, then spreading that toast with a paste of the pounded liver — is the standard English and Scottish treatment of small game birds of the period, and it survives largely unchanged in restaurant kitchens today. Roasting game plainly, with nothing added but butter and its own trail, was regarded as the test of a cook's judgement of heat and time.