Perch
He who has once partaken of the zander or giant perch of the German waters and it is worth going all the way to Dresden to do so-will always think well of Périgueux Sauce this noble family. The zander, abundant in the Elbe, is the most delicious of the perches; but they are all delicious and refined. "That perch," says Dr. Badham, "require clear fresh water for their very existence, accounts perhaps for the wholesomeness of their flesh, always superior from this circumstance to that of eel, carp, or tench, which, from feeding everywhere, often taste of the weeds and feculence where they dwell. The ancients have not left us any hints as to how perch were cooked. The present practice over the Continent is to stew them in vinegar, fresh grape, orange-juice, or other sour sauce; but though this is certainly the common way in some parts of Italy, at the Lago Maggiore they are spitted in their scales, and basted while roasting with the same acid juice; in Holland butter is added. Though a scaly fish, they vitiate Aristotle's dictum, and are best in roe." To this add that they make an admirable waterzootje, and that when they are large (Yarrell says that one taken from the Serpentine in Hyde Park weighed nine pounds) they may be fried in fillets to the great glory of the finny tribe.
Ever since Galen, the perch has been described as peculiarly the fresh-water fish for invalids, -it is so delicate. PÉRIGUEUX SAUCE-named from Périgord, where the truffles abound. It is the best brown sauce, with a glass of sherry or Marsala added to it, and a quantity of chopped truffles.
PHEASANT if cooked fresh is not so good as a good poularde: it requires to be kept till the fumet is fully developed, and then it is beyond any fowl. So clear is this in the French way of thinking, that with them the verb meaning to give the high flavour of game is faisander; and the rule of the French kitchen is that a pheasant is not fit to be eaten till, having been hung up by the tail, it drops down. For most tastes this may be too much; but a Pickles certain degree of highness in the flavour is essential to the enjoyment of the bird.
Roast Pheasant. The same as a roast partridge-barded with bacon. Brillat-Savarin recommended the larding of the breast; but he has been furiously assailed for it. Boiled Pheasant. - Some people stare with astonishment when they hear of a pheasant being boiled. This is all very well till they try it. Serve it with Soubise sauce, plain onion sauce, celery sauce, or oyster sauce.
Brazed Pheasant. This is Francatelli's receipt, and he called it Pheasant à la Gudewife. Truss a pheasant as for boiling, and put it in a stewpan with half a pound of ham cut in square pieces. Fry them together over a moderate fire, and when the pheasant is browned all over, add four sliced Spanish onions, some pepper and salt, and a spoonful of Chutnee. Put the lid on, and set the whole to simmer gently for about three-quarters of an hour, by which time the pheasant will be done and the onions reduced to a pulp. Place the pheasant on its dish. Stir the onions on the fire, to give the sauce some consistency by further reduction, if needed, and then pour it over the pheasant and serve.
The perch and Périgueux entries are reference notes rather than recipes, but the pheasant section ends with a workable braise from Francatelli. These points cover what needs translating.
- Ignore the hanging ruleThe instruction that a pheasant is unfit to eat until it drops from the tail describes deliberate putrefaction and should not be followed. Modern practice is a few days' hanging in a cool larder at most, or a bird bought already hung and drawn.
- The braise, in shortBrown a trussed pheasant with 8 oz diced ham, add 4 sliced Spanish onions, salt, pepper and a spoonful of chutney, cover tightly and simmer 45 minutes. The onions collapse into the sauce; there is no added liquid, so the pan must be heavy and the heat genuinely low.
- Timing and donenessThree-quarters of an hour will suit a young hen bird; a large cock or an older bird is likely to need longer, perhaps an hour and a quarter. Cook to 165F in the thigh and let the onions reduce while the bird rests.
- ChutneeIn an 1870s English kitchen this means a bottled sweet-sour chutney of the Anglo-Indian type, commonly mango-based. A tablespoon of a modern mango chutney is the closest thing; sharp fruit relishes work, tomato-based ones do not.
- Spanish onionsLarge, mild, sweet yellow onions, not a modern Spanish variety. Four of them is 2 lb or more, which sounds excessive and is not: they are the whole of the sauce.
- Barded, not lardedFor the roast, barding means tying sheets of fat bacon or pork fat over the breast and removing them near the end to let the skin colour. Larding, which Brillat-Savarin recommended and which Kettner's notes he was furiously assailed for, means threading fat through the flesh with a needle.
- Périgueux sauceAs given, this is espagnole or a good brown sauce finished with a glass of sherry or Marsala and chopped truffles. Truffle quantity is unstated and would now be ruinous; a small quantity of preserved truffle with its juice is the practical reading.
- Zander and waterzootjeThe German zander is pike-perch, sold as sander or zander and available frozen; ordinary perch or walleye stand in for it. A waterzootje is the Flemish white fish stew, fish poached in its own broth and enriched with butter, herbs and usually egg yolk and cream rather than a flour thickening.
- YieldOne pheasant serves two generously, three at a stretch. The ham and onions stretch the braise further than a roast bird will go.
Kettner's Book of the Table (1877) was written by the journalist E. S. Dallas and named for Auguste Kettner, the Soho restaurateur, and its alphabetical entries mix cookery with quotation and opinion in roughly equal measure. That habit is on full display here: the perch entry is essentially a digest of Dr. Charles David Badham, whose Prose Halieutics, or Ancient and Modern Fish Tattle (1854) supplied Victorian food writers with most of what they knew about fish in classical literature, while the nine-pound Serpentine perch comes from William Yarrell's History of British Fishes. The pheasant entry belongs to a different tradition, the mid-century professional kitchen: Charles Elm o Queen Victoria, and Kettner credits this receipt to him under the title "\>fumet and on faisander reflects a period in which game was hung far longer than any modern larder would permit, and in which the resulting flavour was treated as the point of eating pheasant at all.