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Pheasant, Fillets Of
Take a well-hung young pheasant; pluck, draw, and singe it, and then braise the fillets. To do this, cut off the flesh from the breast and wing in one slice from each side; this will give two large fillets; and to get three fillets of uniform size, lift the minion or smaller fillets, which consist of the strips of flesh which lie under the wings, together with the flesh of the merry-thought, and any little pieces that can be lifted off. Dip the fillets into beaten egg, and then into rather highly-seasoned bread-crumbs. Fry in hot fat thin slices of bread of the same size as the fillets until they are lightly browned; drain and dry them. Fry the fillets also, and when they are equally and brightly browned, serve upon the pieces of toast on a hot dish, with a good gravy poured round them. To make the gravy, stew the bones and trimmings of the pheasant in half a pint of water, with an inch or two of lemon-rind, a pinch of salt, and half a dozen peppercorns. When they have simmered for half an hour or more, strain the gravy, skim carefully, and thicken with a tea-spoonful of brown thickening. Add a dessert-spoonful of mushroom ketchup, or a tea-spoonful of strained lemon-juice, if either are liked; make the sauce hot, and serve. Time, three-quarters of an hour to stew the sauce, ten or twelve minutes to fry the fillets. Probable cost of pheasants, 3s. each when in full season.
A straightforward crumbed-and-fried game breast with a stock made from the carcass. Two things need translating: the vocabulary of butchery, and the frying time.
- The hinge: do not fry for twelve minutesPheasant breast is very lean and turns dry and fibrous well before the crumb has had ten minutes in the pan. Egged and crumbed fillets of this thickness want roughly three to four minutes a side over moderately hot fat, cooked through to 165F at the centre as for any poultry; the original's longer time may assume a well-hung bird and a cooler pan.
- "Braise" is loose usageThe instruction to braise the fillets is contradicted by the method that follows, which is a shallow fry. Whatever was meant, follow the frying directions as given.
- Minion fillets and merry-thoughtThe "minion" fillets are the two strips of tenderloin lying against the breastbone under the wing — what a butcher now calls the tenders. The merry-thought is the wishbone; the flesh over it is the small nugget of breast meat left behind when you cut the main fillet off.
- "Well-hung"Traditionally a pheasant hung by the neck in a cool larder for several days to a week to tenderise and develop flavour. Birds bought today are hung, plucked and chilled commercially, so take the recipe's plucking and drawing as read and buy oven-ready.
- Brown thickeningA standing kitchen preparation of flour cooked in fat until nut-brown, kept in a jar for thickening sauces. A teaspoonful of it is about a teaspoon each of flour and butter worked together and browned, or use a small brown roux; it should darken the gravy as well as bind it.
- Half a pint of waterAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, a generous cup and a quarter. It reduces during the half-hour simmer, so expect a scant cup of finished gravy — enough for two.
- Mushroom ketchupNot tomato ketchup but a thin, dark, salty mushroom extract, still sold in Britain and closest in character to a mushroom-heavy Worcestershire sauce.
- YieldOne pheasant gives two large fillets plus the minions and the merry-thought flesh, which the recipe works up into fillets of uniform size; a fried bread croute is cut for each fillet.
Cassell's treats pheasant as an everyday luxury because in late Victorian Britain it was one: driven shooting on landed estates produced birds in quantity between the opening of the season on 1 October and its close on 1 February, and game dealers in town sold them by the brace. The recipe's logic is thoroughly French-trained — filets lifted whole, crumbed, fried, and set on croutes with a stock made from the bones — but the vocabulary is old English kitchen speech, "merry-thought" for the wishbone being a name generally traced to the wishing game played by two people pulling it apart. The quoted price of three shillings a bird is worth reading alongside the book's other game entries.