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Moor Game, Broiled
Truss the birds firmly, and divide them down the back; flatten the breast, and bruise the leg-Season with cayenne, white pepper, and salt. Put them into a stewpan with plenty of butter. Close the lid, and simmer for fifteen or twenty minutes. Take them out, and finish on the gridiron. Serve with a sauce made as follows. Chop some shallot and a little parsley together, stew them both in a small quantity of stock; add vinegar and pepper. Time, eight to ten minutes to broil.
A two-stage method: the birds are part-cooked in butter under a lid, then finished over direct heat. Both stages are short, and the recipe assumes a bird considerably smaller and leaner than a chicken.
- What moor game isMoor game means red grouse, the moorland bird shot in Britain from mid-August. A dressed bird runs roughly 12-16 oz and serves one person; ptarmigan, partridge or a small guinea fowl portion behave similarly, though guinea fowl is fatter and milder.
- Spatchcocking"Divide them down the back; flatten the breast" amounts to spatchcocking: the bird is split through the back, opened out and the breast pressed flat so it cooks evenly in one layer. (Modern cooks usually cut either side of the backbone with shears and remove it; the recipe only says to divide the back.) "Bruise the leg" most likely means crushing the thigh so the legs lie flat and cook at much the same rate as the breast.
- Truss, then cutThe instruction to truss and then split reads oddly today, and the recipe does not explain why both are wanted. Whatever the reason, a couple of metal skewers pushed crosswise through the opened bird will hold it flat on the gridiron.
- The stewpan stageA stewpan is a lidded pan for stovetop cooking, broadly answering to a modern sauté pan or wide saucepan. Keep the butter at a bare bubble rather than a fry; the point is to cook the legs through gently before the breast meets fierce heat.
- Don't take the full twenty minutesFifteen to twenty minutes in butter plus eight to ten on the gridiron will leave grouse dry and livery. Modern practice cooks the bird to about 135-140F at the thickest part of the breast, which for a spatchcocked grouse usually means well under ten minutes covered and three to four minutes a side over the fire.
- GridironA gridiron is bars over live coals: a barbecue grill or a ridged cast-iron pan over high heat. Start skin-side down, and let the butter clinging to the bird do the browning.
- The sauceThis is a sharp shallot-and-parsley deglaze, closer to a light sauce ravigote than gravy. Roughly one large shallot and a tablespoon of parsley to a quarter-cup of stock, softened until the shallot loses its raw edge, then vinegar and pepper to taste; a splash of the buttery pan juices ties it to the bird.
- ServingOne bird per person, with fried breadcrumbs, watercress or game chips in the period manner. The sauce is served alongside rather than poured over, so the skin stays crisp.
Grouse was the prestige game bird of the Victorian and Edwardian table, its season opening on 12 August and its arrival in London markets treated as a small annual event. Cassell's belongs to that world: a household dictionary written for cooks who might genuinely be sent a brace of birds from a shooting party in Yorkshire or Scotland, and who needed to know what to do with them beyond roasting. Cookery books of the period tend to reserve roasting for the best young birds, with broiling another treatment for young birds of the year and stewing or salmi for older, tougher ones. The sauce here, shallot and parsley sweated in stock and sharpened with vinegar, reflects the familiar English conviction that rich dark game meat wants acid against it, the same logic that puts rowan or redcurrant jelly beside a roast bird.