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Grouse, to Hash
Take the remains of cold grouse, and cut them into neat joints. Put the skins, bones, and trimmings into a saucepan with two shallots, sliced, and three ounces of butter rolled thickly in flour. Shake the pan over the fire until the butter is melted and lightly browned, then add half a pint of stock, a tea-spoonful of salt, half a tea-spoonful of pepper, and half a blade of mace, pounded. Cover the saucepan closely, and simmer gently for an hour. Strain the gravy, and return it to the saucepan with a glass of claret. Let it boil up, then put in the pieces of grouse, and when these are quite hot, serve immediately, with toasted sippets round the dish. The gravy must not boil after the grouse is put in. Probable cost, 6d., exclusive of the grouse and wine. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A leftovers dish built on a quick game stock: the carcass makes the gravy, the meat is only warmed through in it. Everything depends on the last line of the recipe.
- The hingeThe gravy must not boil once the grouse joints are in. Already-cooked game breast tightens and dries within a minute of a rolling boil; keep the pan at a bare shiver and pull it as soon as the meat is hot, two to three minutes.
- Half a pint of stockImperial measure, so 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups. After an hour of covered simmering you will have noticeably less, which is the point — the strained liquid should be a small quantity of concentrated gravy.
- Butter rolled thickly in flourThree ounces of butter worked with flour until it will hold a coating — a beurre manié used as a roux. Browning it lightly in the pan with the bones is what gives the sauce its colour; take it to the shade of a hazelnut and no further, or the flour turns bitter.
- The saltA teaspoonful of salt into ten fluid ounces that will then reduce for an hour is heavy by current taste, particularly if the stock is already seasoned. Add half, and correct after straining.
- Half a blade of maceMace is the lacy covering of the nutmeg seed, sold today mostly ground. Half a blade is a very small amount, somewhere between an eighth and a quarter teaspoon of ground mace — a whisper, not a flavour you should be able to name in the finished gravy.
- A glass of claretClaret is red Bordeaux; a Victorian wineglass, used as a kitchen measure, is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz, though the term was loose. Any dry, unoaked red will do. It goes in before the meat and gets one boil — that boil is the last one the pan should see.
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of toasted or fried bread, set around the rim of the dish. They soak up the gravy and are the only starch the recipe offers.
- Getting the birdRed grouse is a British game bird and is hard to come by in the United States, where the sale of wild-shot native game is generally prohibited, though imported grouse is available from some specialist dealers. Farmed pheasant, partridge or quail behaves much the same way in this recipe; roast dark-meat chicken or duck leg will carry the sauce.
- YieldAs written, three or four servings, which probably assumes the remains of more than one bird; a single leftover grouse will not stretch far.
Cassell's belongs to a long line of Victorian household books that treated cold game as raw material rather than a leftover: the joints were carved off and the frame boiled down to make the sauce. Red grouse, shot on Scottish and northern English moors from the Glorious Twelfth of August, was expensive and seasonal, and a bird bought at that price was expected to appear twice at table. The sixpence is costed "exclusive of the grouse and wine," so the figure covers only the butter, shallots, stock and spice. Finishing a game hash in claret with a little mace is common in the period, and belongs to the same family as the "devilled" and "hashed" reworkings of roast birds, and to the French salmis, made in much the same way.