Home › The Principles of Cookery › PHEASANT (a la Bonne Femme)
PHEASANT (a la Bonne Femme)
Pick, draw, and singe a well-hung pheasant, and put it into a buttered stewpan with three ounces of good beef dripping, and six ounces of ham, fat and lean together, cut into inch squares. Fry over a gentle fire until the pheasant is equally and lightly browned all over, then add a table-spoonful of chutney, and three or four large Spanish onions cut into thin slices. Cover the saucepan closely, and simmer gently until the pheasant is done enough, and the onions are quite soft. Put the bird on a hot dish. Beat the onions over the fire for eight or ten minutes, season with pepper and salt, and put them round the bird. Serve immediately. Time, about an hour to stew the pheasant. Probable cost of pheasants, 3s. when in full season. PHEASANT (a la Sainte Alliance), an Epicure's dish.
Take a well-hung cock pheasant, draw it, and truss it for roasting. Stuff it with a forcemeat made as follows. Mince finely the flesh and intestines of two woodcocks or snipes, add to them two ounces of fresh butter, a tea-spoonful of salt, a tea-spoonful of pepper, a good pinch of cayenne, a small bunch of savoury herbs finely powdered, and as many chopped truffles as will be required to fill the pheasant. Truss the bird firmly, and roast it before a clear fire, basting liberally with fresh butter. Lay under it, in the pan, a round of toasted bread, upon which a little of the stuffing has been spread, and serve the bird on the toast. Brillat Savarin, with whom this recipe originated, says that a pheasant prepared thus is fit for beings better than men. Send brown gravy and bread sauce to table separately. Time to roast, from three-quarters of an hour to one hour and a quarter, according to the size. Probable cost of pheasants, 3s. when in full season. Sufficient for three or four persons.