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Roast Pheasants (Cock bird is considered)
The cock bird is considered the best; if young he has short blunt spurs, but if he is old they are long and sharp. Pheasants are in season from 1st October till 1st February. Pheasants should be hung until blood drops from the beak, then pluck and draw them; truss the same as a fowl for roasting, but leave the head on. Put a small piece of rumpsteak inside the bird; this helps to keep it moist and improves the flavour; leave the feet on, but cut the toes off. Tie a slice of fat bacon on the breast, or else lard the breast; roast in front of a clear fire, thirty minutes for a young bird and forty minutes for an old one. Baste it with butter; just before it is finished remove the bacon from the breast, dredge lightly with flour, baste with butter; this will make a nice froth. Send to table with watercress round and fried crumbs, and serve good brown gravy and bread sauce.
Partridges. These birds are in season from 1st September till 1st February. They should be trussed in the same way as a pheasant, and, though a smaller bird, will take nearly as long to roast, because the breast is plump. Not being so dry a bird as the pheasant, omit the steak from the inside.
Serve on fried breadcrumbs with watercress round, and hand good brown gravy and bread sauce.
A late-Victorian roast built around an open fire and a bird hung far longer than most cooks would accept now. The method translates well to an oven, but the timings and the hanging both need rethinking.
- Hanging"Hung until blood drops from the beak" describes a bird well into decomposition, hung in an unheated larder in winter. Hang game in a refrigerator or a dedicated chiller at 0-4C, feathered and undrawn, for two to five days depending on how gamey you want it; anything hung warm is a genuine spoilage risk rather than a matter of taste.
- Judging ageThe spur test still works on a cock bird, as does the beak: a young pheasant's lower beak bends easily and the breastbone tip is pliable. Most birds sold today are young, so the shorter roasting time is the relevant one.
- Fire to oven"A clear fire" means a hot, smokeless bed of coals with the bird turning in front of it. In an oven, use 400F for a pheasant, on a rack, breast up, and turn the tin once.
- TimingThirty to forty minutes suited a bird revolving in fierce radiant heat and a period that liked game underdone at the bone. A 2-2.5 lb pheasant needs roughly 45-55 minutes at 400F; take it to 165F in the thickest part of the thigh and rest it 10 minutes. Partridge, at around 1 lb, needs 25-30 minutes despite the book's claim that it takes nearly as long.
- Barding and the steakPheasant breast is very lean and dries out fast; the bacon on the breast and the piece of rump steak in the cavity are both moisture insurance rather than flavourings you eat. Streaky bacon or a sheet of back fat does the job, and the steak can be replaced with a knob of butter and a halved shallot if you would rather not sacrifice beef.
- The frothRemoving the bacon, dusting with flour and basting with butter for the last few minutes is the classic "frothing" finish. It works best with the oven turned up for those last few minutes, and the flour must be dredged thinly or it pastes.
- Fried crumbsThese are coarse white breadcrumbs fried slowly in clarified butter until dry and golden, served in a separate dish or under the bird. Make them ahead and keep them warm and uncovered, or they go soft.
- Head and feetTrussing with the head on and the toes cut off is usually explained as a service convention that told the diner what bird was on the platter, though that is received tradition rather than documented fact. Modern birds arrive headless; nothing about the cooking changes.
- Shot and yieldWild-shot birds carry lead pellets and shattered bone in the breast and thigh; run a finger over the flesh before serving. One pheasant serves two, a partridge serves one.
Pheasants have been naturalised in Britain for many centuries and by the eighteenth and nineteenth were the central bird of the managed shoot, which is why a cookery book treats them under Game as a matter of course rather than as a novelty. The statutory seasons quoted here, 1 October to 1 February for pheasant and 1 September to 1 February for partridge, are still the shooting seasons in England and Wales, so the dates in this Victorian text remain accurate. The instruction to hang until blood drops from the beak reflects a taste for high game that has since retreated sharply; larders were cold, unlit and often exterior, and the bird ripened in conditions no domestic kitchen now reproduces. Roasting before a clear fire, with constant basting and a final dredge of flour to raise a froth on the breast, was the standard technique for any prime joint or bird until the closed range and then the gas oven displaced the spit, and the frothing step survived in print long after the fire it was designed for had gone.