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Plovers, Roasted
Pluck a brace of plovers without drawing them, and wipe them well outside with a damp cloth. Truss them with the legs close to the body, and the feet pressing upon the thighs; bring the head round under the wing. Put them down to a clear fire. Lay in the pan slices of toast, one slice for each bird, first moistening it in good gravy, and baste the plovers liberally. A few minutes before they are done dredge a little flour over them, and let them be nicely frothed. Spread the trail which has dropped from the birds evenly upon the toast, and serve the birds upon it. A little melted butter may be sent to table in a tureen. Time to roast the birds, fifteen to twenty minutes. Probable cost, plovers, 2s. 6d. a brace. Sufficient for two persons. (See also PLOVER, GOLDEN, ROASTED.)
This is a set-piece of the Victorian game course, and it is one of the entries in Cassell's that has been overtaken entirely by law rather than by taste. The notes below explain the recipe as a historical document.
- The birds are protectedThe birds are effectively off the table — Lapwing and grey plover (the "green plover" of the older books is the lapwing) are protected in the UK under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981; golden plover remains a quarry species with a close season, but wild plover may not lawfully be sold for the table. In North America plovers are covered by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. There is no legal commercial supply of wild plover.
- Roasted undrawn, on purpose"Without drawing them" is not an oversight. Small game birds were cooked with the viscera in, and the "trail" — the intestines and their contents, which melt out during roasting — was the point of the toast underneath. The trail is only lightly cooked as it drips, and it goes onto bread that is then eaten without further heating.
- Fifteen to twenty minutes at the fireEven setting the trail aside, that timing was calculated to leave the breast frankly rare, which is how the period wanted small game. Nothing in the method brings the bird or the soaked toast to a temperature that would deal with the pathogens carried by wild birds.
- What "frothed" meansA dredging of flour over hot basted skin, given a last blast of heat, blisters into a pale crisp coating. The same trick appears throughout Cassell's for roast game and poultry.
- "A brace" and the priceA brace is two birds, the standard sporting unit for sale. Two shillings and sixpence a brace, or about fifteen pence a bird, was a moderate game-bird price for the period, and plover and lapwing were still sold openly in London markets.
- Down to a clear fireThe birds were roasted before an open grate, on a spit or jack, with a dripping pan set beneath to catch the fat and the trail. The toast sat in that pan, which is why it is described as lying "in the pan" rather than on a dish.
- If you want the dishUse a current recipe for a legally farmed game bird, drawn and cooked through. Do not attempt this method with any substitute.
Plovers reached the Victorian table on the strength of the same reasoning that put snipe and woodcock there: a bird small enough to roast whole in twenty minutes, and one whose gut was held to be clean enough to eat because it fed on worms and insects rather than grain. That belief, traditional rather than tested, is why the trail is spread on toast here instead of thrown out — the toast catches the drippings and becomes the richest part of the dish. Cassell's places this in the general run of game entries alongside golden plover, lapwing and their eggs, all of which were sold in quantity in London markets through the nineteenth century; plovers' eggs in particular were a luxury of the spring season. The collapse of those populations is often said to lie behind the protective legislation of the following century, though the causes are contested and the decline of the lapwing in particular is generally attributed principally to changes in farming; either way, this page now reads as a record of a vanished trade rather than a set of instructions.