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Quenelles of Grouse
Cut the meat from the remains of dressed grouse. Remove the skin and sinew, and pound the flesh in a mortar until it can be rubbed through a coarse sieve. To every pound of meat add half a pound of bread-crumb, soaked in milk and drained, one ounce of fat bacon, two ounces of butter, half a tea-spoonful of salt, the same of pepper, the eighth of a nutmeg, grated, and the well-beaten yolks of two eggs. When these ingredients are well mixed, pound them again all together; then add the whites of the eggs, beaten to a firm froth. Divide the mixture into small quantities. Form these as nearly as possible of the size and shape of an egg; poach them in boiling stock, drain well, and serve in a dish, with some nicely-flavoured gravy, made from the bones and trimmings of the grouse, and thickened with arrowroot. Time, a quarter of an hour to poach. Probable cost, exclusive of the cold meat, 8d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A thrifty second-day dish built on cooked game rather than raw forcemeat, which changes how it behaves. The whole thing hinges on the poaching liquid: keep it at a bare shiver rather than the rolling boil the text calls for, or the quenelles will break up and go stringy.
- Poach, do not boilBring the stock to the boil, then drop it back until the surface only trembles, around 175-180F. Egg-shaped quenelles at that temperature hold together; at a full boil the beaten whites expand fast and the outside tears.
- The mortar, and its modern replacementPounding to a paste and passing through a sieve is exactly what a food processor does in a minute. Pulse the meat cold, add the panade and butter, then process again; fold the whipped whites in by hand at the end rather than machining them.
- Cooked meat, not rawThis is a leftovers recipe. The grouse is already roasted, so the poaching is setting the egg and heating through, not cooking the bird. The mixture will be drier and less naturally binding than a raw forcemeat, which is why the panade and eggs are so generous.
- Proportions in modern termsPer 1 lb (450 g) picked meat: 8 oz (225 g) crumb from a stale white loaf soaked in milk and squeezed nearly dry, 1 oz fat bacon, 2 oz butter, 1/2 tsp each salt and pepper, about 1/4 tsp grated nutmeg, and 2 eggs separated. Half a pound of crumb to a pound of meat is heavy by current taste; two-thirds of that gives a lighter quenelle.
- If grouse is not to handAny dark-fleshed roast game works: pheasant, partridge, wood pigeon, or the legs and thighs of a roast duck. Plain chicken makes an insipid version, as the seasoning here is pitched at a strong, gamey meat.
- Test one firstPoach a single small quenelle before shaping the rest. If it collapses, work in another spoonful of squeezed crumb; if it is stodgy, slacken with a little stock or cream. Adjust the salt at this stage too, since you cannot taste the raw mix safely once the eggs are in.
- Size and timingA quarter of an hour suits quenelles genuinely the size of a hen's egg, shaped between two large spoons. Smaller ones, formed with dessert spoons, need six to eight minutes and are easier to keep intact.
- The gravySimmer the carcass and trimmings with an onion and a little thyme, strain, reduce, and thicken with arrowroot slaked in cold water, about 2 tsp per pint. Arrowroot clears as it thickens and must not be boiled hard afterwards or it thins again.
- YieldFive or six as the book has it means five or six as part of a larger meal. As a main course with potatoes and a green vegetable, expect three or four servings from a pound of meat.
Quenelle comes into English from French cookery in the nineteenth century, itself generally traced to the German Knödel, a dumpling; by the time Cassell's was compiled it meant specifically a pounded forcemeat bound with panade and egg and poached in stock, the elegant end of the kitchen's repertoire. What makes this version characteristic of the book is that it is a leftovers recipe: grouse was a prestige bird, its season opening on the Twelfth of August, and a household that could roast one was expected to make the carcass work twice over. The costing of eightpence "exclusive of the cold meat" is the point of the entry, showing the cook that a second, apparently grand dish could be got out of scraps for the price of bread, butter and two eggs. Pounding in a mortar and passing through a sieve was the labour that made such dishes possible, and it was labour a Victorian kitchen had in a way that a modern one does not.