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Pheasants
Prepare, stuff and roast the same as chicken. Serve with currant jelly and giblet sauce to which a little currant jelly has been added.
A cross-reference recipe of the kind loose-leaf books relied on: the method lives under roast chicken, and this entry only tells you what changes. What changes most is the fat.
- Bard the birdPheasant carries almost no subcutaneous fat and dries out where a chicken would stay juicy. Cover the breast with bacon, salt pork or a butter-soaked cloth for most of the roasting, removing it near the end to colour the skin.
- Oven and timeThe chicken directions this points to are not reproduced here, so any temperature is inference: a hot start followed by a moderate oven is the usual reading of period roasting practice, which in a modern oven would be something like 450F for the first 10-15 minutes and then 350F. A farmed bird of 2 to 3 lb will want roughly 45 to 60 minutes total.
- DonenessTake it to about 165F in the thickest part of the thigh and let it rest 10 minutes. Game was often cooked considerably longer in older kitchens, which will not have helped pheasant's reputation for dryness.
- Wild versus farmedA farm-raised pheasant behaves much like a small, lean chicken. A genuinely wild older bird is tougher and better braised or pot-roasted than dry-roasted, whatever the recipe says.
- ShotAny wild-shot bird may hold pellets. Run a finger over the breast and thighs before stuffing, and warn anyone at the table.
- Giblet sauceSimmer neck, heart and gizzard (not the liver, which turns the sauce bitter) in lightly salted water for about an hour, then use that stock and the pan drippings thickened with flour. Stir in a tablespoon or two of red currant jelly off the heat so it melts without scorching.
- Currant jellyRed currant jelly is carried by many supermarkets near the preserves; tart cranberry or lingonberry serves the same purpose, which is acid and sweetness against lean dark meat.
- StuffingThe cavity of a pheasant is small. If you stuff it, keep the quantity light so the bird cooks evenly, or cook the dressing separately and put an onion half and a few herb sprigs inside instead.
- YieldOne pheasant serves two generously, three at a stretch. Plan on a bird for every two people.
Pheasants were introduced to North America from Asia by way of Europe, with the successful releases in Oregon's Willamette Valley in the 1880s generally credited with establishing the ring-necked bird across the continent; by the time Mrs. Fryer's loose-leaf book appeared, pheasant had moved from an imported curiosity to something a hunting household might actually bring home in autumn. The brevity of the entry is characteristic of the loose-leaf format, which assumed the cook had the roast chicken page in front of her and needed only the variations. The pairing with currant jelly is older than the bird's American career: sweet-tart fruit jellies with game were standard English practice, and the trick of stirring jelly into the giblet gravy rather than serving it only alongside gave the sauce both gloss and the acidity that lean game meat wants.