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Pheasant and Macaroni
Pick the meat from the remains of a cold roast pheasant; carefully remove the skin and sinews, and with two forks pull the flesh into pieces about half an inch long. Weigh it, and put it aside until wanted. Place the bones and trimmings in a saucepan with as much water as will cover them, and let them simmer gently until all the goodness is drawn out, and the sauce is so much reduced that it will merely moisten the meat; then, supposing that the latter weighs about half a pound, put with the gravy two shallots, a little salt and pepper, half a salt-spoonful of grated nutmeg, a table-spoonful of mushroom ketchup, and a table-spoonful of sherry. Thicken with a table-spoonful of flour, mixed smoothly with two ounces of butter, and let the gravy simmer gently twenty minutes longer. Strain it, put it back into the saucepan, and let it boil up. A few minutes before the pheasant is to be served put the meat into the gravy, let it warm through without boiling, then pour it into the centre of a hot dish, and place round it some macaroni prepared as follows. Throw six ounces of good macaroni into three pints of boiling water, add a little pepper and salt, and simmer gently for twenty minutes. Drain well, and put it back into the saucepan with a pint of good stock, a small tea-spoonful of salt, a tea-spoonful of unmixed mustard, half a salt-spoonful of grated nutmeg, a pinch of cayenne, and a salt-spoonful of pepper. Let the mixture boil until the macaroni is tender, then add a table-spoonful of grated Parmesan and an ounce of butter. Simmer a quarter of an hour longer, shaking and tossing the saucepan to mix the macaroni thoroughly with the cheese; then serve. Time, three hours. Probable cost, 1s. 4d., exclusive of the cold meat. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A Victorian way with the second day of a roast game bird: the carcass makes the sauce, the meat is only warmed in it, and the macaroni is cooked twice. Two details carry the dish.
- Never let the meat boilCold roast pheasant is already fully cooked and very lean. Once it boils it turns to string. Drop it into the finished sauce off a bare simmer and give it three or four minutes to heat through.
- The macaroni timing is for a vanished productThe macaroni timing suits a different product -- Twenty minutes in water, then a further boil in stock, then fifteen minutes more with cheese suggests a harder, thicker macaroni than the modern dried kind, which is likely to go soft well before the end. Boil it several minutes short of the packet time, then let it finish in the stock, and give it only a few minutes with the cheese.
- Salt-spoonfulA quarter of a teaspoon. A salt-spoon was the small spoon that sat in the open salt cellar. "Half a salt-spoonful" of nutmeg is therefore about an eighth of a teaspoon.
- Unmixed mustardDry mustard powder, straight from the tin, as opposed to mustard already mixed to a paste with water or vinegar. A teaspoon of powder is assertive; it is what gives the macaroni its bite.
- Mushroom ketchupA thin, dark, salty mushroom liquor, not the tomato sauce. It is still sold in Britain; failing that, a teaspoon of soy or a little mushroom soaking liquid with a dash of Worcestershire gets close to the same savoury depth.
- The shallots go in wholeThe shallots -- The recipe does not say whether to chop them, but since the gravy is strained before serving they can go in whole and be left behind at the straining.
- Oven and hobNothing here is baked. Everything happens in two saucepans, and the "hot dish" is a warmed serving platter. The stated three hours is largely the unattended simmering of the bones, the recipe not specifying how long that takes.
- Quantities and yieldThe sauce is calculated on about half a pound of picked meat, which is roughly what one roast pheasant yields. Serves three or four as written. The stock should be a good brown one; a weak stock leaves the macaroni tasting only of mustard and salt.
Cassell's belongs to the great age of the English re-made dish, when a large household expected the remains of Monday's roast to reappear on Tuesday transformed rather than merely sliced cold. Pheasant was shot in quantity between October and the beginning of February and arrived in the kitchen whole and often in pairs, so recipes for its second appearance are numerous in Victorian dictionaries of cookery. The pairing with macaroni reflects the period's fondness for what was then called macaroni cooked "in the Italian manner" or with Parmesan, a dish that had been fashionable in England since the eighteenth century and was by then firmly domesticated as a savoury accompaniment rather than a course of its own. The costing of 1s. 4d., exclusive of the meat, is a reminder of the book's intended reader: a mistress of the house checking the cook's expenditure line by line.