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Stuffed Pheasant
Rub cleaned bird with butter, dredge with flour, and fill with the following stuffing: 2 TABLESPOONS BUTTER I ONION, CHOPPED 1/2 CUP CHOPPED CELERY 3 PEELED APPLES, DICED 1/2 TEASPOON SALT 14 POUND SALT PORK, DICED 1/2 TEASPOON PEPPER 1/2 TEASPOON SAGE I TEASPOON MINCED PARSLEY BREAD CRUMBS Heat butter, fry onion slowly until it begins to color, add celery and continue to fry until lightly browned. Add all remaining ingredients and mix well. Use only enough bread to complete the quantity of filling needed-any kind of bread including corn bread which makes especially good game stuffing.
A campfire-and-cabin game recipe that gives you the stuffing in full but leaves the roasting to your judgment. The fruit-and-salt-pork filling is doing two jobs: flavoring a lean bird and adding the fat it lacks.
- The salt pork quantityThe printed "14 pound salt pork" is a broken fraction; 1/4 pound is the amount that suits this volume of stuffing. Dice it small so it renders during roasting rather than sitting in lumps.
- No oven figure is givenPheasant is usually roasted at 350F, breast up, covered or barded, until the thigh reads 165F on an instant-read thermometer. A 2 to 2 1/2 lb bird takes roughly an hour, but weight varies enormously with age and species.
- Stuffed birds cook unevenlyA packed cavity slows heat to the center, so the breast overcooks before the stuffing is safe. Fill loosely, and check that the stuffing itself reaches 165F; many cooks now bake it alongside in a covered dish instead.
- Butter and flourRubbing with butter then dredging with flour puts a layer of fat and a browning crust on a very lean bird; the flour holds the butter against the skin. It works, but wild pheasant still benefits from being barded with bacon or salt pork laid over the breast.
- Sage and saltThe recipe does not say whether the sage is dried or fresh; half a teaspoon is about right for dried, and roughly three times that, finely chopped, if fresh. Go light on added salt until the pork has been tasted, since salt pork varies from mildly seasoned to aggressively cured.
- ApplesFirm tart apples hold their shape -- Granny Smith, Braeburn, Northern Spy. Softer dessert apples collapse into sauce and make the stuffing wet.
- Bread crumbs"Only enough bread to complete the quantity" means the crumbs are filler, not the body of the stuffing. Use dry crumbs or day-old cubes; fresh soft bread turns pasty. The corn bread suggestion is a good one and gives a coarser, sweeter filling.
- YieldThe stuffing as written fills one pheasant with some to spare. One bird serves two people generously, or three if carved and served with the stuffing.
Pheasant is not native to North America; the ring-necked pheasant was introduced from Asia in the late nineteenth century and spread through the grain belt, becoming one of the most widely hunted upland game birds in the country. That is why an outdoor cookbook can treat it as ordinary fare, and why the pairing with apples, celery and sage reads as generically American rather than as an old European game preparation. The salt pork is the telling detail: wild birds carry almost no fat, and traditional treatments of them commonly add some, whether by larding, barding with bacon, or burying diced cured pork in the stuffing. The note that corn bread makes an especially good game stuffing points to kitchens that used it for turkey and chicken as well.