Pheasant Cutlets
INGREDIENTS for dish for 6 persons.-2 pheasants, egg and bread-crumbs, cayenne and salt to taste, brown gravy. AVERAGE COST, 6s.
Procure 2 young pheasants that have been hung a few days; pluck, draw and wipe them inside; cut them into joints; remove the bones from the best of these; and the backbones, trimmings, &c., put into a stewpan, with a little stock, herbs, vegetables, seasoning, &c., to make the gravy. Flatten and trim the cutlets of a good shape, egg-and-bread-crumb them, broil them over a clear fire, pile them high in the dish, and pour under them the gravy made from the bones, which should be strained, flavoured and thickened. One of the small bones should be stuck on the point of each cutlet.
TIME.-10 minutes or rather more to broil the cutlets.
SEASONABLE from the 1st of October to the beginning of February.
A game dish that is really a technique: bone the best joints, flatten them into cutlets, crumb and grill them, and build a quick gravy from what is left. Nothing here is difficult, but pheasant is lean and unforgiving of overcooking.
- The hinge: do not overcookPheasant breast has almost no intramuscular fat and turns dry and cottony past about 150F/65C in the centre. The stated ten minutes assumes thin, flattened cutlets over a fierce fire; check at six or seven minutes and pull them as soon as the juices run clear.
- "Broil" means grillIn British usage of the period this is cooking over or under direct radiant heat, not the American oven broiler necessarily, though a modern overhead broiler at full heat works. "A clear fire" means coals burned down past the smoking stage, so a hot grill with no flare-up.
- Buying the birdsA brace of pheasants is still the usual unit from a game dealer, and prices in season are modest. Supermarket pheasant is often sold as skinned breast fillets, which will not give you the leg joints or the bones for the gravy, so buy whole birds if you can.
- Hanging"Hung a few days" meant hung in feather in a cool larder, which tenderises and deepens flavour. Birds bought oven-ready today have generally been hung already; young birds need little or none, and there is no need to add hanging time at home.
- ShotWild-shot birds carry lead or steel pellets. Run your fingers over each cutlet after flattening; a pellet is easy to find in a thin piece of meat and very unpleasant to find in the mouth.
- Egg and bread-crumbBeaten egg, then dry white crumbs. Season the crumbs with the cayenne and salt rather than the meat, and press them on firmly, as flattened cutlets shed coating over open heat.
- The gravyBackbones, wings and trimmings browned first, then simmered with stock, an onion, carrot and a bay leaf for 45 minutes to an hour gives far more flavour than a raw-bone simmer. Strain, reduce, and thicken with a little beurre manie or arrowroot. The recipe asks only that the gravy be "strained, flavoured and thickened"; a spoonful of Madeira or port would suit the period.
- Yield and costTwo pheasants for six is a small portion of meat each, so this is a course rather than a main plate by modern standards. The 6s. average cost is Victorian household accounting and means nothing today.
- The bone on the pointSticking a small bone into each cutlet is presentation only, imitating a lamb cutlet. Skip it without loss, or use a trimmed wing bone if you want the period look.
The recipe belongs to the long nineteenth-century fashion for treating game as though it were butcher's meat: boned, flattened, crumbed and served in the shape of a lamb cutlet, with a fake bone pushed in for the silhouette. The seasonal note is the giveaway that these are wild birds: it corresponds to the British pheasant shooting season, which still runs on those dates. Pheasants themselves are not native to Britain; they were introduced long before, and their numbers in Beeton's day are usually connected with the great estate rearing and driven-shooting boom of the mid-Victorian period, which is often said to have put game regularly into middle-class kitchens through dealers and the post. The "Italian Recipe" tag in the heading is probably best read as a style label for a dressed, crumbed preparation rather than as documented provenance.