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Broiled Pheasant
Cut the bird into four pieces and fry them in lard; when nicely browned all over and half done through, take them from the fire, drain the lard from them, brush over with beaten egg, roll them in a paper of breadcrumbs mixed with salt and cayenne, put them on a hot well-greased gridiron and broil them for ten minutes over a clear fire.
Fillets of Pheasants, Maintenon Take the fillets from two large young pheasants and cut each in two slices, beat them lightly, season with salt and pepper, put them into a sautepan with two tablespoonfuls of olive oil and saute them over a quick fire, keeping them rather underdone. When cooked, take the fillets out and drain them. Put two chopped onions in the sautepan and fry them till lightly browned, adding more oil if necessary; then mix in two tablespoonfuls each of chopped mushrooms and chopped parsley and one pint of white sauce seasoning with salt, pepper, grated nutmeg and one-half teaspoonful of sugar. Bail the sauce till thickly reduced, stirring it at the same time; put the fillets in the sauce, move it away from the fire and leave it till cold. Cut as many pieces of white paper as there are fillets into heart-shaped pieces; put a fillet on each with the sauce divided equally and wrap the papers over, twisting them well at the ends. Broil the fillets over a clear, but slow fire. When cooked put them on a hot dish, leaving them in their papers, and serve with a sauceboatful of rich gravy.
Fried Fillets of Pheasants with Truffles Cut off the fillets of two young but well-hung pheasants; put them in a sautepan with some thin slices of truffles and fry them in clarified butter. When nicely browned on both sides drain them, place on a sheet of paper on the table and trim them all to the same shape, leaving the truffles to cook a little longer; put the fillets in the sautepan again and give them one or two turns over the fire. Reduce some bechamel sauce with essence of truffles and pheasants; drain the fillets and truffles, arrange them on a hot dish, pour the sauce over them, and serve.
Three separate pheasant preparations run together in one block of type here, which was normal in kitchen manuals of this period. Read the page as three recipes: a breaded broil, fillets baked in paper, and fillets fried with truffles.
- The hinge: pheasant is leanA wild pheasant carries very little fat and goes dry and stringy fast. In the first two versions the point of the two-stage cooking (fry, then finish) is to get colour without prolonged heat. Many cooks pull the breast at 155-160F and let it rest, though standard guidance for poultry is 165F; legs and thighs want longer, so consider cooking them separately as a braise.
- Whole bird, four piecesCutting a pheasant into four most likely means two breast halves and two leg-and-thigh portions. The legs need noticeably longer than the breast, so brown all four but give the legs a longer stint in the pan before they go to the grill.
- "Fry them in lard"Lard was a common frying fat in kitchens of this period and it still works well here for its high smoke point and clean flavour. Clarified butter, called for in the truffle version, or a neutral oil are direct substitutes.
- Gridiron and "clear fire"A gridiron is a grate set over glowing coals with no flame or smoke - a clear fire. A cast-iron grill pan over high heat, or an overhead broiler at full heat with the rack about four inches down, gives the same ten-minute finish. Grease the bars well or the crumb coating will tear off.
- Paper cases, and what not to doThe Maintenon fillets are cooked en papillote. Use parchment, not "white paper," cut in a heart shape so the folded edge crimps closed. Do not broil paper parcels over a live fire as written; put them on a sheet pan in a 400F oven for 10-12 minutes and let the sauce steam the fillets. The sauce must be fully cold before wrapping, or it will soak the parcel.
- "Bail the sauce"Evidently an error for boil. The white sauce is presumably a bechamel; reduce it until it mounds on the spoon, since a thin sauce will leak from the parcel.
- "Well-hung" pheasantsGame of this period was commonly hung in a cool larder for some days to slacken the flesh. Farmed pheasant today comes plucked and refrigerated, and further ageing is not something to improvise in a modern kitchen. Buy it dressed and cook it fresh.
- Essence of trufflesA reduction of truffle trimmings, once a standard professional store cupboard item and now hard to find. Steep chopped truffle peelings or a spoonful of the liquid from a tin of truffles in the bechamel instead, and avoid synthetic truffle oil, which will flatten the sauce.
- YieldNone of the three gives a number. One pheasant in four pieces serves two; two pheasants give four fillets, each cut in two, so eight slices - four modest portions with the sauce and a side.
Oscar Tschirky ran the Waldorf's dining rooms at the moment when American hotels were serving huge quantities of wild game, much of it market-shot and shipped by rail, and a page like this one - three pheasant preparations stacked together - reflects a kitchen that expected birds by the crate rather than by the pair. The Maintenon garnish is named for Madame de Maintenon, second wife of Louis XIV, and in classical French usage denotes a preparation of onion, mushroom and a thick white sauce, often enclosed in paper; the attribution is traditional rather than documented, as with most of the marquise-and-mistress dish names inherited by nineteenth-century cookery. Within a generation of this book's publication the commercial market-hunting trade that supplied hotels like the Waldorf had been shut down - by the Lacey Act and, at least as importantly, by a patchwork of state game laws - and pheasant on an American menu came to mean a farm-raised bird.