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Pheasant Perigueux
Pluck, singe and draw a pheasant and make the following forcemeat: Peel one-half pound of fresh truffles, chop and pound them in a mortar with three ounces of bacon fat. Put the pounded mixture in a small saucepan and stir it over the fire until hot through; then turn it in a basin, let it get cold, and season it to taste. Stuff the bird with this and leave it for two days to absorb the flavor of the truffles. Wrap it in a sheet of buttered paper, lay it in a roasting pan and set it in the oven to roast, keeping it well basted. When the pheasant is cooked remove the paper, place it on a hot dish, pour round it a rich brown gravy made from the necks, gizzards, etc., and serve, garnished with truffles and potato croquettes, with a little mushroom catsup and essence of ham added
A Gilded Age game dish built around a half pound of fresh black truffle, which is now the deciding factor in whether it gets made at all. Most of the technique translates directly; two details do not.
- The two-day restHolding a stuffed raw bird for two days was normal when game hung in a cold larder and pheasant was expected to taste high. If you want the truffle perfume without that risk, slip sliced truffle under the skin and hold the bird loosely covered in the refrigerator at 40F or below for 24 hours, stuffing it only just before it goes in the oven. Fat-bound forcemeat sealed inside a raw body cavity for 48 hours is outside anything a modern kitchen should attempt.
- Half a pound of fresh trufflesAt current prices this is the most expensive part of the dish by a wide margin. Preserved truffle peelings pounded with the bacon fat, reinforced with a spoonful of truffle juice from the tin, give a plausible version; truffle oil does not, since most commercial truffle oil is aromatised synthetically and the scent fades under heat.
- Oven heatThe recipe specifies none, only 'set it in the oven to roast.' Work at 400-425F, dropping to 375F once the bird has colored.
- Buttered paperParchment, buttered on the side that touches the bird, tied or tucked around the breast. It does the job a modern cook would give to a bacon bard or foil, and unlike foil it lets the skin dry enough to crisp once removed for the last ten minutes.
- DonenessPheasant is lean and unforgiving. A 2 1/2 lb farmed bird takes roughly 45-55 minutes; pull it when the thickest part of the thigh reads 165F, and rest it 10-15 minutes. Roasting to the point where the breast is dry is the usual failure here, not undercooking.
- The gravy"Necks, gizzards, etc." means a quick brown stock: brown the trimmings hard, deglaze, simmer with a little onion and carrot while the bird rests, then strain and reduce. Madeira is a common finish for a Perigueux sauce, though this recipe reaches instead for mushroom catsup and essence of ham.
- Mushroom catsup and essence of hamMushroom catsup is a thin, dark, salty mushroom extract, still sold by British grocers and easily made; it is not tomato ketchup. Essence of ham was a reduced ham-bone stock kept on hand in professional kitchens. A spoonful of reduced ham stock, or a scrap of prosciutto simmered in the gravy, covers it.
- YieldOne pheasant serves two generously, three at a formal table where it is one course among several. Scale the forcemeat down accordingly if you are not cooking for a Waldorf dining room.
Anything called Perigueux points to the Perigord in southwestern France and its black winter truffles, and by the late nineteenth century the name on a menu meant a rich brown Madeira sauce heavy with chopped truffle. The practice of stuffing a game bird with truffles days before roasting so that the flesh takes up their scent is older than the sauce and was already being described as an established gastronomic refinement in early nineteenth-century French writing. Oscar Tschirky, maitre d'hotel of the Waldorf, was not himself the cook, and this entry reads like what it is: a record of what the hotel's French-trained kitchen sent out to a clientele that expected game in season, truffles by the half pound, and potato croquettes around the dish.