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Larded Grouse
Grouse are rather dry birds and need to be larded to be palatable. Clean, rinse and wipe thoroughly. On each bird lay thin slices of bacon, covering the bird entirely and keeping in place with crossings of soft twine. Place in a roastingpan and pour over them boiling water, sufficient to use for basting the birds while cooking. When done, remove the strips of bacon, brush the birds with olive oil or melted butter, dredge with flour and place in the oven again until a rich brown. The liquor in the pan may be thickened, seasoned, and used as gravy, adding a small glass of claret or Madeira wine. Arrange the birds on a platter and garnish with rings of sautéd green peppers and the strips of bacon used to cover the birds while roasting.
A straightforward barded roast that assumes a cook who already knows how long a game bird takes. The gaps to fill are oven temperature, timing, and the fact that what the recipe calls larding is actually barding.
- Larding vs. bardingTrue larding threads strips of fat pork through the flesh with a needle. What is described here — slices of bacon tied over the outside — is barding, and it is the easier and more forgiving of the two. Butcher's twine replaces the "soft twine"; do not use anything synthetic.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. Roast at about 425F; a slow oven dries grouse out long before the skin colours.
- Timing and donenessA ruffed grouse of about 1 to 1.5 lb takes roughly 25 to 35 minutes barded, plus 5 to 10 minutes uncovered for browning. Pull the birds at 155-160F in the thickest part of the thigh; grouse breast served much past that goes to liver-textured cardboard, which is precisely the dryness the bacon is meant to prevent.
- The boiling waterPour in only enough to film the pan, about half a cup, and top it up if it threatens to dry. Too much and the birds steam rather than roast, and the skin never takes the final browning.
- The second trip to the ovenThis is the hinge. Remove the bacon, brush with oil or butter, dust lightly with flour, and return the birds only until the flour turns a deep brown — a few minutes at high heat. Left longer, the whole point of barding is undone.
- Sourcing the birdsWild game birds are generally not sold commercially in the United States; grouse usually comes from a hunter, though imported Scottish red grouse is sometimes available in season. Poussin or Cornish hen substitute reasonably and, being fatter, need less bacon.
- Shot and feathersIf the birds come from the field, run a finger over the breast for shot pellets and singe off any remaining pinfeathers over a flame before rinsing.
- The gravy"A small glass" of claret or Madeira is probably somewhere in the region of 2 to 3 fl oz. Add it to the thickened pan liquor and let it simmer a minute or two to take the raw edge off, though a short simmer will not drive off all the alcohol.
- YieldOne grouse per person. Two birds and their gravy will serve two generously with the peppers and bacon on the platter.
Grouse belongs to the small, lean, dark-fleshed game that Edwardian cookbooks treated as a matter of course and that most home kitchens now never see. Because such birds carry almost no subcutaneous fat, cooks wrapped them in pork or bacon — barding — a technique long standard across European roasting, and one that also protected the delicate breast from the dry heat of a coal range. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns, issued its cook book in the early twentieth century for a middle-class American household.