Pheasant, Roast
INGREDIENTS. -Pheasant, flour, butter. AVERAGE COST, 3s.
Old pheasants may be known by the length and sharpness of their spurs; in young ones they are short and blunt. The cock bird is generally reckoned the best, except when the hen is with egg. They should hang some time before they are dressed, as, if they are cooked fresh, the flesh will be exceedingly dry and tasteless.
After the bird is plucked and drawn, wipe the inside with a damp cloth, and truss it in the same manner as partridge. Roast
The text as printed is garbled at the head and breaks off at "Roast", so the ingredient list and the cooking directions have to be reconstructed. Everything that matters for a roast pheasant is here in outline: choose the bird, hang it, truss it, and protect the lean breast with fat.
- The hinge: fat on the breastPheasant has almost no subcutaneous fat and dries out faster than chicken. The butter and flour of the ingredient list are for barding and dredging or with with bacon or a thick butter-smeared paper over the breast for the first two-thirds of roasting, removed at the end to colour.
- Oven temperatureThe text breaks off at "Roast" and gives no fire or oven direction, so any figure is a reconstruction: a hot oven, around 400-425F, suits a lean bird. A 2 to 2 1/2 lb hen bird needs roughly 45 minutes, a larger cock 50-60; take it out at 165F in the thickest part of the thigh and rest it 10 minutes.
- Hanging, done safelyThe advice to hang before dressing is sound the flesh is genuinely tough and flavourless straight from the field but Victorian larders were cold rooms, not warm kitchens. Hang feathered and ungutted in a refrigerator at under 40F for two to four days; discard any bird with green discolouration or a sour smell rather than a gamey one.
- Spurs and sexingThe spur test still works on a wild bird: short, rounded spurs suggest a young one. Farmed pheasant sold at a butcher or supermarket is usually young; an older or notably large bird is better braised or casseroled than roasted.
- Trussing "in the same manner as partridge"That means legs pressed close to the body and tied, wings folded back under, head either left on and tucked or removed. A simple string truss round the legs and tail is enough for even cooking; more elaborate skewering was generally a matter of presentation.
- 3s. average costThree shillings was a substantial sum in the 1860s roughly a day's wage for a housemaid which places pheasant with the luxury game rather than the everyday roast. Game was also often a gift from a country estate rather than a purchase.
- What went with itRoast game of this period was commonly sent to table with brown gravy made from the giblets, bread sauce, and fried breadcrumbs, with watercress on the dish; the truncated text here gives none of that. One bird serves two, or three at a stretch.
- ShotA wild-shot bird may still carry lead pellets. Feel over the breast and thighs before cooking and warn anyone at the table.
Pheasants are generally traced to the Norman period or later in Britain, though scattered Roman-period remains suggest an earlier presence; in any case the bird became a mass presence only in the nineteenth century, when large-scale rearing and release for driven shooting turned an occasional delicacy into a seasonal glut on country-house tables. That is why Beeton treats the bird as something the mistress of the house is likely to receive rather than buy, and why she opens with how to tell an old bird from a young one the reader is being handed an unknown quantity from someone else's estate. The insistence on hanging reflects a period taste for game held far longer than most modern cooks would tolerate: "high" pheasant, kept until the flesh softened and the flavour turned pronounced, was widely considered the proper state for the table. The stray header "Italian Recipe" belongs to a neighbouring entry and has been pulled into this one by the typesetting of the compiled edition.