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Grouse Soup
Roast a brace of grouse for a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes; then cut off the breast and the best of the meat, and lay it aside. Pound the rest of the meat in a mortar, and fry it in a little butter with three ounces of undressed lean ham, cut into dice, a chopped carrot and onion, a bay-leaf, and a sprig of thyme and parsley. When lightly browned, add two quarts of good stock and the bones of the grouse. Stew gently for an hour, skimming carefully to remove the fat, then strain the soup, and add to it a table-spoonful of salt, a few grains of cayenne, two blades of mace, pounded, and a little brown thickening (see GRAVY, BROWN, ROUX). Simmer half an hour longer. A few minutes before serving, put in the breasts, etc., of the grouse, cut into slices, and a glass of claret. Make the soup hot once more, and serve. Sufficient for seven or eight persons. Probable cost, 1s., exclusive of the grouse and wine.
A Victorian game soup built on the frugal principle that the carcass is worth more than the breast. Two things decide whether it works: the birds must be underdone at the roasting stage, and the sliced breast meat must only be warmed through at the end.
- A braceTwo grouse. Red grouse are small — about 12 oz each dressed — and the recipe leans on the stock rather than the meat for body. Pheasant, partridge or squab stand in without changing the method.
- Roasting temperatureThe recipe gives no temperature, and roasting at this date was as often done before an open fire as in an oven. Fifteen to twenty minutes is short enough to leave the breasts rare; they finish in the hot soup at the end.
- "Undressed lean ham"Raw, i.e. uncooked: ham not yet boiled or baked, though still cured. Use raw gammon, pancetta or unsmoked bacon cut in dice; sliced cooked ham will not brown or give the same depth.
- Pounding the meatThe mortar work is to break the dark leg and carcass meat down so it gives up flavour in the frying and the hour's stewing. A few pulses in a food processor does it. The meat itself is discarded with the strainings.
- QuantitiesTwo imperial quarts is about 2.3 litres. A glass of claret means a wineglassful of dry red Bordeaux or similar; the recipe brings the soup back to heat after it is added.
- The saltA tablespoon of salt into two quarts of already-seasoned stock will overwhelm the soup by modern standards; Victorian household stock was often made unsalted. Season at the end, to taste.
- Brown thickeningA brown roux — equal butter and flour cooked to the colour of a hazelnut. Two tablespoons of each is enough for this volume; whisk it into a little hot soup before returning it to the pan.
- MaceTwo blades pounded is roughly a quarter to half a teaspoon of ground mace. It is a common note in Victorian game soups; nutmeg is not a straight substitute for it.
- FinishingSlice the reserved breasts thin, add them, and bring the soup back to just below a simmer. Any real boiling turns rare game meat grey and dry. Serves seven or eight as a first course.
Grouse soup belongs to the Victorian shooting season, and its shape is dictated by economics as much as taste: the breasts of a brace of red grouse were the prize, and everything else — legs, carcass, trimmings — went into the stockpot rather than the bin. Cassell's places it among the game soups of a period when the railway had made Scottish grouse a London commodity within a day of the twelfth of August. The note on cost is characteristic of the book, which priced almost everything for the mistress checking the kitchen accounts; here the frank "exclusive of the grouse and wine" leaves the expensive parts out of the reckoning. The claret and pounded mace are conservative touches, both long established in English game cookery by the time this recipe was printed.