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Pheasant, Stewed, with Cabbage
Pick, draw, and singe two pheasants, and truss them as for boiling. Divide two good-sized cabbages into quarters, soak them in salted water for an hour, and cut off the stalks; plunge them into boiling water, and let them boil for ten minutes; then take them up, drain them, press the water from them, and put them into a large stewpan. Bury the pheasants in the cabbage, and add half a pound of streaky bacon, one pound of uncooked Bologna sausages, one pound of pork sausages, a handful of parsley, a small sprig of thyme, a bay-leaf, two carrots, an onion stuck with six cloves, and a little pepper. Pour in as much stock as will just cover the whole, cover the stewpan closely; bring the contents to a boil, and then let them simmer gently for an hour and a quarter. At the end of that time, lift out the birds and the meat, and keep them warm in the oven. Drain the cabbage, season with salt and pepper, and stir over a good fire until it is dry. Place it on a dish, put the pheasants upon it, and place round it the bacon, sausage, and carrot cut into slices. Send good brown sauce, or, if preferred, a little poivrade sauce, to table in a tureen. Probable cost of pheasants, 3s. each, when in full season. Sufficient for eight or ten persons.
A French-style faisan aux choux scaled for a Victorian dinner table. The method is sound, but a few of its assumptions — about the birds, the sausages and the cabbage — need translating.
- The hinge: which bird you haveAn hour and a quarter of simmering suits a tough old cock pheasant, which is exactly what this dish exists to rescue. A young farmed hen of 2 lb will be dry and stringy at that point; give it 35-40 minutes, or bury it in the cabbage only for the last half hour after the bacon and sausages have flavoured the pot.
- "Pick, draw, and singe"Pluck, remove the innards, and burn off the remaining hairs and pin-feathers over a flame. Birds bought today come dressed, but a quick pass over a gas burner or with a cook's torch still helps. "Trussed as for boiling" means legs and wings tied tight against the body so the bird holds its shape in the liquid.
- Bologna sausagesNot the pink pre-cooked lunchmeat sold under that name now. The recipe specifies "uncooked", so what is wanted is a raw sausage that will stand a long simmer; a plain fresh salsiccia or a mild cotechino stands in well. Prick nothing; you want the fat in the cabbage.
- Streaky baconUse a single unsliced piece of unsmoked or lightly smoked pork belly, around 8 oz, rather than rashers. Sliced bacon disintegrates over 75 minutes and cannot be "cut into slices" at the end as instructed.
- The cabbage blanchTen minutes in boiling water for quartered green or Savoy cabbage is a blanch, not a cooking; its purpose is to draw out bitterness and the sulphurous edge before the long stew. The hour in salted water beforehand is an old precaution against insects and can be shortened to a rinse.
- Drying the cabbageThe final step — stirring the drained cabbage over a hot fire until dry — is what keeps the dish from being soup on a plate. Do it in a wide pan over high heat and be patient; braised cabbage holds far more liquid than it looks.
- Stock and the pot"As much stock as will just cover" will take several pints in a pan large enough for this quantity; judge it by the pot rather than by a fixed figure. A light chicken or veal stock is right; the sausages and bacon supply plenty of salt and fat, so hold back the salt until the end as the recipe directs.
- Poivrade sauceA peppery brown sauce built on a mirepoix with vinegar and crushed peppercorns, strained and often finished with game trimmings. A good reduced brown sauce sharpened with red wine vinegar and coarse pepper does the same job.
- YieldEight to ten as written, which is accurate given two birds plus two pounds of sausage and the bacon. Halving it to one pheasant, one cabbage and a pound of sausage feeds four to five comfortably.
Pheasant or partridge stewed with cabbage is a classic of French provincial cookery — perdrix aux choux is the better-known version — and its logic is frankly economic: an old, tough bird past the age for roasting is worth little on its own, but it will perfume a pot of cabbage, bacon and sausage magnificently over an hour of gentle heat. Cassell's, which drew heavily on French practice while pricing everything for a British household, gives the cost as three shillings per bird "when in full season", a reminder that game in the late nineteenth century was governed by the shooting calendar rather than the supermarket. The pairing of game with cabbage and cured pork belongs to the same family as the potée and the garbure: one pot, long cooking, and the meat lifted out at the end so the vegetable can be dried off and used as the platter. That final touch — cabbage as the bed, sliced sausage and carrot arranged around it, sauce sent separately in a tureen — is pure late-Victorian service, dressing a peasant stew for a dinner table.