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WOOD-HENS (Russian fashion)
Take three or four wood-hens (gelinottes), truss them, put them into a stewpan with butter, season, and fry them all over. When about done, baste them with a few table-spoonfuls of sour cream, and finish cooking them, basting frequently. Drain them afterwards, cut each of them into three parts, and dish them up. Mix a little bechamel into the sauce, reduce it until of a good consistency, then pour it over the wood-hens, masking them with a thick coating. Sprinkle over bread-crumbs, let them cook in the oven till the sauce is slightly coloured.
A French-Russian treatment of a small game bird: browned in butter, finished with sour cream, then masked in sauce and gratinated. Two things decide whether it works — keeping the cream from breaking, and not overcooking the breast.
- The birdGelinotte is hazel grouse, a small northern forest bird of roughly 12-16 oz, not sold in most countries and protected in parts of Europe. Partridge is the closest substitute in size and flavour; two quail per person, or a poussin, will also carry the sauce.
- Sour cream will breakOnce the cream goes into the pan, keep it at a bare simmer. Modern low-fat sour cream splits almost immediately at higher heat; use full-fat sour cream or crème fraîche, and add it off the boil.
- TimingPartridge-sized birds need about 20-25 minutes total in the butter, quail nearer 12. Recipes of this period generally cooked game through; the breast is better pulled at 150-155F internal and rested, with the legs given longer if they are jointed off.
- "Fry them all over"This means browning on every surface in the butter over moderate heat, not a hard sear. The butter carries the fond that becomes the sauce, so keep the heat low enough that it does not blacken.
- BéchamelA small quantity of plain white sauce, added only to give the pan juices body enough to coat. Two or three tablespoons is ample for four birds; more turns the dish pasty.
- Cut into three partsSplit the bird down the back, then take the breast off in one piece — two leg-and-thigh portions and one breast. This lets the sauce sit on cut surfaces rather than sliding off whole skin.
- The gratin"Till the sauce is slightly coloured" wants strong top heat for a few minutes only; for a modern cook that means a hot oven, around 425-450F, in the upper part, or a spell under the broiler. A long stay in a moderate oven will dry the meat and the crumbs will stay pale.
- YieldThree or four birds serve four as a main course, or six as a first course given that each is jointed into three.
The sour-cream finish is what makes this "Russian fashion": smetana basted over roasting game is a standard of the Russian kitchen, and French chefs working in or writing about Russia in the nineteenth century absorbed it as a recognised style. Hazel grouse was also traded westward: frozen game, ryabchik among it, reached European markets from Russia and Scandinavia in winter, which is part of why a European cookery writer could print the recipe under its French name, gelinotte, and expect a reader to find the bird. The final crumbing and browning belongs to the other half of the dish's parentage: masking cooked meat in a reduced sauce, dusting it with crumbs and colouring it in the oven is textbook French gratin practice.