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Pepper and Salt (Take the breast)
Take the breast of the pheasant and cut it into neat pieces, add to this a teaspoonful of chopped mushrooms, a little salt and pepper, the yolk of one egg, and three tablespoonfuls of brown sauce.
Then make a panada of two ounces of flour, one ounce of butter and one gill of stock; cook this well and turn it out to cool. Take the rest of the meat of the pheasant, about three-quarters of a pound, pound it in the mortar with the panada, two eggs, pepper and salt, and pass it through a sieve. Grease a mould well and fill it with this mixture, leave a well in the centre, and fill it in with the minced breast of the pheasant, cover over with more of the mixture, smooth it over with a palette knife dipped in hot water, cover with a buttered paper, and steam steadily for one hour.
This is a steamed pheasant pain — a forcemeat loaf with a core of diced breast — and the title is an artefact of indexing rather than a description of the dish. The hinge is the panada: if it is not cooked until it leaves the sides of the pan and then cooled completely, the mixture will slacken and weep in the mould.
- A gillFive fluid ounces in a British book of this period, so a scant two-thirds of a US cup. With two ounces of flour and one of butter it makes a stiff panada, not a sauce.
- Brown sauceMeans espagnole or a reduced demi-glace, not the bottled table condiment sold under that name today. A few spoonfuls of well-reduced game or veal stock thickened with a little roux will do the same job.
- How much birdOne pheasant is unlikely to stretch to the quantities described: two breast fillets to dice and a further three-quarters of a pound of leg and trim meat to pound will usually mean two birds. Strip every sinew from the leg meat before pounding.
- Mortar and sieveA food processor replaces both. Work the meat with the cold panada and eggs in short bursts, keeping everything refrigerator-cold, then push it through a drum sieve or fine strainer if you want the smooth texture the original assumes.
- The mouldA charlotte mould or small loaf tin of about a pint and a half to two pints, buttered heavily. "Leave a well in the centre" means lining the mould with forcemeat about half an inch thick, filling the cavity with the seasoned diced breast, and sealing it over.
- Buttered paperButtered parchment, laid directly on the surface. Add a layer of foil over it if your steamer drips, since condensation will pit the top.
- Steaming and donenessSteam over gently simmering water, not a hard boil, or the eggs will curdle and the loaf will honeycomb. One hour is about right for a pint mould, but check the centre reaches 165F before you take it out.
- Resting and servingLet it stand ten minutes, then pour off any liquid before turning it out; it will slice cleanly warm and even better cold. Serves four to six as an entrée, with the same brown sauce used in the filling passed separately.
Steamed forcemeat loaves of this kind were a fixture of late-Victorian and Edwardian professional cookery, where they went under names such as pain de faisan or a mousseline moulded in a charlotte tin, and they belonged to the same tradition as quenelles and galantines: a way of turning the tough, sinewy parts of a bird into something refined enough for the entrée course while the prize breast meat stayed visible at the centre. The panada — flour, butter and stock cooked to a paste — was the standard binder before cream-based mousselines became fashionable, and pounding in a mortar then forcing through a sieve was the usual route to a smooth texture in a kitchen without machinery. Pheasant appears throughout books of this class, and a moulded, steamed preparation was one of the standard ways of handling it.