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Moor Game Soup
Take the pot-liquor of a boiled turkey; add any inferior parts of game, with the gizzards, crops, and livers, and boil until reduced to two quarts; then strain. Skin the birds, and cut them into neat pieces; fry them in butter, with a few thin slices of lean ham, an onion, a carrot, and part of a turnip, all sliced. Drain, and put the game into the stock, with a head of celery cut into inch lengths, and some parsley; a few Jamaica peppers and cloves may be added; but much seasoning should be avoided, as it destroys the flavour of the game. Slices of venison, or the trimmings, will add much to the flavour of this soup.
A Victorian game soup built on leftovers: the water a turkey was boiled in becomes the stock, and the grouse trimmings do the rest. Most of the translation work is in the ingredients rather than the method.
- Moor gameRed grouse, shot on the northern moors, and the reason the soup is seasoned so lightly. Any strongly flavoured game bird works: pheasant, partridge, guinea fowl, or a mix. Farmed poultry will give you a pleasant soup but not this one.
- Pot-liquor of a boiled turkeyThe cooking water from a whole poached turkey, a routine by-product in a house that boiled birds. Substitute about three quarts of well-made turkey or chicken stock, unsalted, so that reducing it to two quarts does not make it briny.
- Crops and gizzardsThe crop is the pouch at the base of the neck and is usually discarded; gizzards, hearts and necks all add body and are worth keeping. Livers give richness but also cloud and slightly bitter the stock, so add them sparingly or hold them back.
- Jamaica pepperAllspice berries, not chilli and not peppercorns. Four or five, with two or three cloves, is plenty for two quarts, and the recipe's warning against heavy seasoning is the point of the dish.
- Frying the piecesBrown the jointed birds and the sliced ham, onion, carrot and turnip properly in butter before they go into the stock. This is where the colour and depth come from; a pale fry gives a thin, grey soup.
- Simmering timeThe original gives none. Grouse legs are sinewy and want an hour or more at a bare simmer, but the breast meat toughens quickly. Simmer the legs and carcass pieces, and slip the breast in for the last ten minutes.
- ShotWild-shot birds may carry lead pellets and the bruised, blood-shot flesh around them. Feel the pieces over before frying and cut out damaged meat; it is bitter as well as gritty.
- YieldAbout two quarts, or six to eight servings as a first course. The recipe strains the stock before the game goes back in and mentions no thickening and no second straining, so the celery and meat stay in the bowl.
"Moor game" is the older English trade name for red grouse, the bird of the northern heather moors, and its appearance in a general household dictionary reflects how much game moved through Victorian kitchens after the shooting season opened in August. The recipe's structure is characteristic of nineteenth-century domestic economy: it begins not with a bird but with the pot-liquor left from boiling a turkey, and it calls for the "inferior parts" — gizzards, crops, trimmings — that would otherwise be thrown out. Cassell's, sold to middle-class households rather than to great kitchens, is full of this sort of second-day cooking. The recipe also cautions against much seasoning, and suggests venison trimmings.