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Ptarmigan Salad
Take the remains of cold roast ptarmigan, or, if liked, roast a bird specially for the purpose, and in this case let it be slightly underdone. Cut it into neat joints, and lay these aside until wanted. Wash in salted water any fresh salad that may be in season, and dry it carefully by putting it after it has been washed, a small quantity at a time, into a dry napkin, and then taking this up by the corners and shaking the moisture from the leaves. Put a layer of the salad at the bottom of a dish, lay the inferior joints of the bird upon it, and cover each piece with sauce. Cover these with the remainder of the salad, and lay the rest of the bird upon it; pour sauce over the whole, and serve. The sauce may be made as follows. Beat the yolk of an egg for a minute. Mix with it a large pinch of salt, half a tea-spoonful of powdered sugar, a tea-spoonful of finely-minced shallot, and the same of chopped parsley, tarragon, or chervil. Stir in, first in drops and afterwards in tea-spoonfuls, four table-spoonfuls of best salad-oil, and beat the sauce briskly between each addition. Add gradually two table-spoonfuls of chilli vinegar, and set the sauce in a cool place till it is wanted. Before using, mix with it a quarter of a pint of thick cream. The salad should not be arranged upon the dish until just before it is wanted. It may be garnished in any way that fancy dictates. It looks very pretty as follows. Place a thin flat rim of butter round the dish on which the salad is to be served. Cut four hard-boiled eggs into eighths lengthwise, and stick the pieces upon the butter, placing the yolk and the white alternately to the outside. Arrange round the salad, and resting upon the top of the eggs, a sort of trelliswork of beetroot cut into thin slices. Pour the white sauce over the salad, and sprinkle over it half a dozen parsley-leaves broken into small pieces. Serve as soon as possible after the sauce is poured on. A salad garnished in this way would have to be served on a flat dish, and not in a salad-bowl. Time, half an hour to roast the bird. Sufficient for five or six persons. Probable cost of ptarmigan, 1s. 6d. to 2s. 6d. each.
A Victorian game salad built on cold roast bird, dressed leaves and a cream-loosened mayonnaise. Most of the work is in the sauce, and the assembly has to happen at the last minute or the leaves collapse.
- The birdPtarmigan is a small northern grouse, lean and, unlike red grouse, comparatively pale-fleshed and mild, rarely sold outside Scotland, Scandinavia and Alaska. Red grouse, partridge or squab can stand in, though the flavour will differ; a boned pheasant leg and breast will also do. A whole bird yields far less than the recipe's five or six servings, so plan on two or three small birds for a table.
- "Slightly underdone"Game birds of this size are roasted hot and fast — 425F for roughly 20 to 25 minutes — and rested. The half hour given here assumes a Victorian range and a bird left rosy at the bone, which is still how grouse is served; if that is not to your taste, cook to 165F and accept a drier result.
- Inferior jointsThis means legs, wings and the scraps off the carcass. They go on the bottom layer where the sauce soaks in; the breast, carved in neat slices, is what sits on top.
- Quarter of a pint of creamAn imperial quarter-pint is 5 fl oz, a scant two-thirds of a US cup. Use double or heavy cream, lightly thickened, and fold it in only just before serving — the sauce slackens as it sits.
- The sauce is a mayonnaiseOne yolk to four tablespoons of oil is a soft, pourable emulsion rather than a stiff one, which is the point. Add the oil in drops at first as directed; the recipe is unforgiving of haste. It is uncooked, so use very fresh or pasteurised eggs, keep it cold, and do not hold it more than a few hours.
- Chilli vinegarA Victorian storecupboard staple: vinegar steeped with dried red chillies for a week or two. Two tablespoons of plain white wine vinegar with a pinch of cayenne is a fair stand-in.
- Powdered sugarHere this means finely ground white sugar, what is now sold as caster or superfine, not icing sugar with its cornstarch. A half teaspoon simply rounds the vinegar.
- Salad oilA mild olive oil or a neutral oil. A modern peppery extra-virgin will dominate the herbs and the cream.
- Assembly and garnishThe butter rim, the egg wedges and the beetroot trellis are pure Victorian table decoration and can be dropped without loss. If you build them, work on a chilled flat platter and dress the salad at the table — the instruction to serve as soon as the sauce goes on is the one that matters.
Ptarmigan (Lagopus muta and its relatives) is a bird of high ground and the far north, and in Britain it belonged to the Highland shooting season, arriving in southern kitchens by rail alongside grouse in the late summer and autumn. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, compiled for a large Victorian middle-class readership, treats it as one game bird among dozens and, characteristically, gives its price — one shilling and sixpence to half a crown. The recipe belongs to the long English tradition of the composed "salad" as a way of using cold roast meat gracefully rather than as a plate of leaves: the layered dish, the mayonnaise let down with cream, and the beetroot-and-egg garnish are all standard supper-table practice of the period. Chilli vinegar and tarragon in the dressing point to the same French-influenced repertoire that produced sauce rémoulade and the cold game mayonnaises of the great Victorian cookbooks.