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Roasts, or Rôts
BLACK Diver-Macreuse. Dressed au chocolat, they are served covered with chocolate.
Black game-Coqs noirs, or Coqs de bruyère.
À la Stockholm, they are larded on one side, and barded with vine leaves on the other side.
Bustard-Outarde canepetière.
À la Russe, they have a slice cut in the breast and a stuffing inserted, and are served with brown sauce.
Capon-Chapon. Served with watercress, it is called au cresson.
Chicken-Poulet. À la Forrester, it is covered with watercress leaves, mustard and cress, etc.
Bardé, it is barded-roasted with a slice of bacon over the breast, and served with the bacon on it.
Rôti à la Staël, it has a white crust from being sprinkled with flour during the roasting.
Spring chickens-Petits poulets.
Young chickens-Petits poussins.
Duck-Canard.
Duckling-Caneton. Served with orange sauce, it is called au jus d'orange or à la bigarade.
Goose-Oie.
Green goose-Oison or Oisillon.
Grouse-Grouse.
À la bonnie lassie, they are served on brown bread toast with melted-butter sauce.
Guinea fowl-Pintade.
Piquée, they are larded; bardée, barded.
Hare-Lièvre.
Hazel hen-Gélinotte.
À la Victoria, they are stuffed and larded, and are served with a brown sauce.
Lapwings-Vanneaux.
Larks-Mauviettes.
Leveret-Lévraut.
Ortolans-Ortolans.
Partridges Perdrix or Perdreaux. "Perdrix" is usually applied to older birds. A brace of partridges is Accolade de perdreaux. Perdreaux de Russie are Russian partridges.
Peahen-Paonne.
Pheasant-Faisan.
Pigeons-Pigeons.
Young pigeons-Pigeonneaux.
Bardés au feuilles de vignes, they are roasted with vine leaves and slices of bacon over the breasts.
Pintail-Pilet.
Plovers-Pluviers.
Prairie birds-Poules de Prairie.
Fat Pullet-Poularde.
Quails-Cailles. They are bardées aux feuilles de vignes in the same way as pigeons.
Rabbit-Lapin.
Young rabbit-Lapereau. A brace of young rabbits-Accolade de lapereaux.
Ruffs and Reeves-Paons de mer.
Shovellers-Rouges de rivière.
Snipes-Bécassines.
Teal-Sarcelle. They are served au cresson with watercress; and à la Bigarade, with Bigarade sauce.
Turkey-Dindon (m.), or Dinde (f.).
Turkey poult-Dindonneau. They are piqué, larded; bardé, barded; and farci, stuffed with forcemeat and truffles.
Widgeon-Canard siffleur. They are sometimes called Macreuses.
Wild Duck-Canard, or Caneton, sauvage.
Woodcocks-Bécasses. Served à la Piémontaise, they have game sauce and slices of truffles. ( 139 )
This is a bilingual vocabulary list, not a set of recipes. For most of the twenty-odd birds here you get the French name, the English name, and nothing else.
- Many of these birds are now protectedLapwings, plovers, larks, ortolans, ruffs and reeves are not food any more. Across Britain and much of Europe they are protected and cannot lawfully be taken for the table, and in the ortolan’s case the hunting of it has been the subject of a specific ban. This page cannot be cooked from, and that is the main thing to know about it.
- À la Staël is a technique you can useFlour dusted over a bird during roasting sets into a pale crust. It is the only cooking instruction on the page that does not depend on an ingredient, and it shows that a great many of these names describe a finish rather than a recipe.
- Accolade means a braceAccolade de perdreaux is two partridges served together, and the word exists because game arrived in the kitchen in pairs and was sold that way. A modern game dealer still sells partridge by the brace.
- Perdrix and perdreaux are not the same birdThe page notes that perdrix was usually applied to older birds. That distinction decided the cooking: a young partridge roasts in minutes, an old one needs long slow braising and will be tough and dry if roasted. The card said which you were getting.
- One name is given to two birdsMacreuse appears as the name for the black diver and again as an alternative name for widgeon. Anyone writing a card from this page could therefore produce a line that two guests would read as two different birds, which is the sort of thing a glossary is supposed to prevent.
- À la bonnie lassie is not FrenchThe grouse entry, served on brown toast with melted butter sauce, carries a mock-Scots name in a chapter otherwise written in kitchen French. It is a useful reminder that the language on a menu card was decorative, and was reached for wherever it sounded well.
What this page preserves is the stock of a poulterer’s shop and the range of a household’s shooting. Twenty-five kinds of bird are listed by name in two languages, from bustard and black game to teal, snipe, woodcock and the very small songbirds, with no suggestion that any of them was unusual or needed explaining. The reader is expected to know them, in the way a reader today knows the difference between a chicken thigh and a breast. Nearly all of the wild birds here have since left the table, some because they are legally protected, others because nobody shoots them for food any more, and that is the single largest difference between this page and a modern list of roasts. The one entry that stops you is the black diver, a sea duck, served covered in chocolate, which suggests that even this kitchen found some of them hard going.