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Pheasant Soup
Flour a well-hung pheasant rather thickly, put it down to a brisk fire, and roast it for a quarter of an hour, basting it plentifully all the time. Take it from the fire, and let it get nearly cold; then remove the flesh from the breast and the upper part of the wings, skin it, and put it aside. Cut up the rest of the bird, and bruise the bones. Scrape a small carrot finely, put it into a stewpan with an ounce of butter, an ounce of the lean of an unboiled ham finely minced, a small sprig of thyme, a bay-leaf, a handful of parsley, half a blade of mace, three or four cloves, half a dozen peppercorns, a shallot, and three or four of the outer sticks of a head of celery. Stir these ingredients over a gentle fire until they are brightly browned, put in the flesh and the bruised body of the bird, pour over them a quart of veal or beef stock, and after boiling stew gently for half an hour, and be careful to remove the scum as it rises. Strain the soup, and rub the meat through a tamis or sieve. Mix the puree with the soup, add to it a small pinch of cayenne, a little salt, a glassful of sherry, and the fillets of the pheasant cut into thick slices; stir over the fire until it is quite hot, and serve. Time, an hour and a half or more. Probable cost, 5s. This soup may be made with the remains of dressed pheasant.
A game consommé thickened with its own pounded meat, from the era before blenders. The method is sound; only the vessels, the fire and the doneness of the breast need translating.
- The hinge: the breast is only part-cookedFifteen minutes at the fire sears the bird but leaves the fillets rare, and the recipe then merely warms them through at the end. Slice them thin and let them poach in the finished soup until firm and opaque, or roast the bird fully and use the breast as garnish.
- "A brisk fire"The book gives no temperature; it means a hot, lively fire for the first fifteen minutes, with hard basting. A hot oven, 425-450F, is a reasonable modern stand-in. The thick coat of flour is there to catch colour fast.
- "Well-hung"Victorian game was aged in feather at cool cellar temperature, commonly for a week or more depending on the weather. Farmed pheasant sold today is hung briefly if at all; the soup will taste milder and you may want to lean harder on the ham, mace and cloves.
- MeasuresAn imperial quart of stock is 40 fl oz, about 5 US cups. A glassful of sherry means a wine glass of the period, roughly 2 to 2 1/2 fl oz. A blade of mace is one strip of the lacy husk from a nutmeg, so half a blade is a very small quantity.
- Unboiled hamRaw cured ham, not cooked deli ham. Prosciutto, speck or a piece of unsmoked bacon all work; an ounce is about 30 g, finely minced so it melts into the vegetable base.
- Tamis and sieveA tamis is a drum sieve of stretched cloth. A food processor followed by a fine sieve does the same work in a fraction of the time; push the solids through with a ladle and discard the fibres and any bone fragments.
- Bruising the bonesCrack the carcass with the flat of a heavy knife or a mallet before it goes in, so the broken bones give up more to the stock.
- After the sherry, do not boilBring the finished soup only to a bare shiver. Boiling drives off the sherry and turns the meat purée grainy.
- YieldA quart of stock plus purée gives four modest first-course servings. "Probable cost, 5s" is a late-Victorian shilling price and has no useful modern equivalent.
The governing idea here is that nothing of a shot bird should be wasted: the breast becomes the garnish, the carcass and remaining meat become the soup, and that meat is sieved back in as the thickening — what the French tradition called a puree of game. The closing line, that it may be made with the remains of dressed pheasant, is the practical point of the entry: a household that had served a roast pheasant one day had the makings of soup the next. The floured searing followed by gentle stewing, and the insistence on skimming, reflect a kitchen where stock was a daily standing project rather than something bought.