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Deviled Legs of Pheasants
Take the legs of cold roast pheasants, score them across four or five times, rub mustard, salt and pepper into the cuts, and broil them on a hot gridiron with a piece of cold butter laid on each leg. Serve as hot as possible.
A leftovers dish: it assumes yesterday's roast pheasant is sitting in the larder and that its legs, tougher and darker than the breast, are worth reviving with heat and mustard. The whole thing takes about ten minutes.
- The hinge: cut deep, season deeperThe hinge: cut, then season into the cuts -- The four or five score marks are not decoration; they let the mustard, salt and pepper sit inside the meat rather than scorching on the surface. The recipe does not say how deep to cut.
- MustardThe recipe specifies only "mustard" and gives no type; in an 1896 American book that could be a prepared mustard or powder mixed to a stiff paste. English mustard powder slaked with a little water gives the fiercest heat; Dijon works as a milder, sweeter stand-in.
- Gridiron to broilerA "hot gridiron" is a grill grate over live coals. A ridged cast-iron pan over high heat, or an oven broiler with the rack about four inches from the element, both work. Give the legs 3-4 minutes a side until the skin blisters and the mustard sets into a crust.
- The butterLaying cold butter on each leg is deliberate: it melts slowly, bastes as it goes, and keeps already-cooked meat from drying out. Do not soften it first, and expect flare-ups over coals.
- Meat that is already cookedThe legs come from a roast bird and only need to be heated through and browned. Broiling until they look raw-crisp on the inside timetable will leave them dry and stringy; pull them as soon as the crust forms.
- Pheasant legs todayFarmed pheasant is sold whole by game butchers and online; wild birds are tougher and often better braised than roasted. The recipe gives no yield, though two legs would make a modest savoury portion.
- Serving"As hot as possible" is the instruction that matters at table; warm the plates. The recipe names no accompaniment, though watercress or plain toast would suit.
Deviling in the nineteenth century meant exactly this: cutting into cold cooked meat, forcing in something sharp and peppery, and returning it to fierce heat. The word is generally traced to English cookery of the late eighteenth century, and by the Victorian period the devil was a common fate of leftover bones and legs, served at breakfast, after the theatre, or as a savoury at the end of dinner. Pheasant legs were an obvious candidate, since the breast was the prize at the roast and the darker, sinewy legs were rarely eaten cold with pleasure. Oscar Tschirky, maitre d'hotel of the Waldorf, collected the dish in his 1896 book alongside a great many other uses for cold game, which tells you something about a hotel kitchen's economy.