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Broiled Pheasant
Pick, draw, and singe the pheasant, and divide it neatly into joints. Fry these in a little fat until they are equally and lightly browned all over. Drain them well, season with salt and cayenne, and dip them into egg and bread crumbs. Broil over a clear fire, and serve on a hot dish, with brown sauce, mushroom sauce, or piquant sauce, as an accompaniment. The remains of a cold roast pheasant may be treated in this way. Time to broil, about ten minutes. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A Victorian way of stretching game: the joints are part-fried, crumbed, then finished over the fire, which suits pheasant's lean, easily dried flesh better than a long roast.
- "Broil over a clear fire"This means a charcoal or wood fire burnt down to steady embers with no flame or smoke, or a hinged gridiron over it. A gas grill at medium-high, or an overhead broiler with the rack about 4 inches from the element, does the same work.
- Ten minutes is for pieces already friedThe frying browns the joints and gives them a head start, so the ten minutes over the fire is mainly to set and colour the crumbs. Starting from raw, the crumbs would likely colour well before the thigh was cooked through.
- DonenessTake leg and thigh to 165F at the bone. Many cooks pull the breast at 155-160F and rest it because it dries out fast, though the usual food-safety guidance for poultry is 165F throughout. Cook the legs a few minutes ahead of the breast pieces rather than putting everything on at once.
- JointingTwo legs split into drumstick and thigh, two wings, and the breast taken off the bone and each side cut in two gives ten manageable pieces from a bird of 2 to 2 1/2 lb.
- Egg and bread crumbsDry crumbs, not fresh, and not panko: fine dry crumbs adhere to warm fried skin and brown evenly under direct heat. Press them on firmly and let the pieces sit ten minutes before they go to the fire.
- CayenneThe recipe gives no quantity; a light dusting, for warmth rather than heat, suits the dish. As a starting point, about 1/4 teaspoon for a whole bird, with a teaspoon of salt.
- Wild birds and shotA shot bird may carry lead fragments and bruised, blood-shot flesh around the wound channel; trim that away, and feel each joint for pellets before crumbing. Farmed pheasant needs none of this.
- The saucesBrown sauce here means a meat-stock brown gravy, thickened with browned roux (espagnole in its more elaborate French form); piquant sauce is the same thickened stock sharpened with vinegar, shallot and chopped gherkin or capers. Any well-reduced game or chicken stock, mounted with butter, serves the purpose.
- YieldOne bird feeds three or four as the book says, but only as part of a course with potatoes and a green vegetable. Two birds for four hungry people.