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Fillets of Game in Cases
Make some cases of white paper, butter them and put a piece of bacon fat in each. Cut any cold roasted game into slices, put them in the cases, place a little bacon fat over each, strew grated breadcrumbs on the top and bake in a brisk oven until browned. Spread a folded napkin or an ornamental dish-paper on a hot dish and arrange the cases on it, garnishing here and there with fried parsley.
A leftovers dish dressed up for the dining room: cold roast game sliced, reheated in paper cases under buttered crumbs. The whole thing hinges on the fat, since cold roasted game is already dry and a second pass through the oven will finish it off unless it is protected.
- Brisk ovenRead this as roughly 400-450F. The cases are only in long enough to heat the meat through and colour the crumbs — likely 8 to 12 minutes. Judge by the crumbs, not the clock.
- White paperThis means a folded paper case, a relative of (though not the same as) en papillote: the case here is open, and the crumbs are meant to brown. Use parchment paper, not modern writing or printer paper, which is bleached, sized and sometimes coated. Small ramekins lined with parchment hold their shape better than free-standing folds.
- Bacon fatHere this means a thin sheet of solid fat cut from the back or belly, not rendered drippings. Sliced fatback, unsmoked or lightly smoked, is closest; a thin rasher of streaky bacon works, though it adds cure and smoke the original did not intend.
- Cold roasted gamePheasant, partridge, grouse, duck, venison or rabbit — anything already roasted and chilled. Slice it across the grain and no thicker than a quarter inch, or the outside dries before the centre warms.
- Reheating leftoversCooked game that has been refrigerated should reach 165F in the centre. A brisk oven does this quickly, which is the point: gentle reheating gives the meat time to shed what moisture it has left.
- Grated breadcrumbsDry crumbs from stale bread, coarse rather than fine. Toss them with a little melted butter before they go on, or the top scorches in patches instead of browning evenly.
- Fried parsleyFlat-leaf or curly parsley dropped into hot fat for a few seconds until it stops sputtering and turns bright and brittle. It must be quite dry going in.
- YieldNo quantity is given. As a rough guide, one case per person as a first course or two as a light main; perhaps 3 oz of sliced meat to a case.
Cooking in paper cases was standard grand-hotel practice by the 1890s, valued because the case went to the table as its own serving vessel and kept the contents hot across a long dining room. The folded napkin and ornamental dish-paper are doing the same work — for this is a composed course rather than a plate of yesterday's bird. Fried parsley as a garnish, now nearly extinct, appears constantly in cookery of this period, where a dark green flourish was the accepted way to finish anything brown.