Home › Entrées › Sauce for the Above
Sauce for the Above
Ingredients.
The bones of the Pheasant.
One ounce of Butter.
One ounce of Flour.
One pint of Stock.
This is an ingredient list rather than a method, of the kind Victorian cookery books printed when the technique was assumed known: it is a brown roux sauce built on stock drawn from the pheasant carcass. The proportions are the standard ones and they still work.
- The pint is imperialIn a British book of this period a pint is 20 fluid ounces, about 2 1/2 US cups. With 1 oz each of butter and flour that gives a pouring sauce, not a coating one.
- Ounces by weightOne ounce of butter is 2 tablespoons; one ounce of flour is a scant 1/4 cup. Equal weights, not equal volumes, is what makes the roux behave.
- The bones are the pointChop the carcass small, brown it hard in the oven or a dry pan, then simmer it in the pint of stock for 30-45 minutes and strain. Unbrowned bones give a pale, thin sauce; the colour and depth of a game sauce come from that roasting.
- Cook the rouxTake the butter and flour to a nut-brown before adding liquid, and add the strained stock hot but off the heat, whisking. A raw or blond roux here leaves the sauce tasting of flour against a strongly flavoured bird.
- Skim and finishGame stock throws a good deal of fat and scum. Simmer the finished sauce 15-20 minutes at the barest tremble, skimming the surface as it collects on one side of the pan, then strain through a fine sieve.
- Seasoning is left to youThe list gives none. Salt, pepper, and a spoonful of redcurrant jelly, port or Madeira stirred in at the end are all conventional with pheasant; add any wine early enough to cook out.
- YieldAbout 1 1/2 cups after reduction and skimming, enough for four to six servings alongside the roast bird.
Cookery books of this kind, written for households with a trained cook and for the cooks themselves, ran on a small set of mother sauces and expected the reader to supply the method from memory; hence a recipe that is nothing but four ingredients and a title referring back to the page before. Making the sauce from the carcass of the bird being served belongs to the logic of a kitchen where nothing edible left the larder unused: the trimmings and bones went into the stockpot, the stock came back to the table as sauce. Pheasant, a managed game bird on English estates and a fixture of the autumn and winter table, was commonly sent up with a brown sauce of this type, sometimes sharpened with redcurrant jelly or fortified wine, and often accompanied by fried breadcrumbs and bread sauce.