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Pheasant Soubise
Truss a pheasant as for boiled chicken, put it in a braisingpan with a layer of bacon, some chopped vegetables, some sweet herbs, and one-half pint of stock, and braise it. When cooked take it out of the braisingpan, drain it and dry it in front of the fire. Place it on a hot dish, surround it with soubise sauce, and serve.
A short professional note that assumes you already have soubise sauce and a braising pan on the stove. The one thing to get right is the bird itself: pheasant has almost no fat, and a braise long enough to soften the legs will dry the breast.
- Bird size and cooking timeA farmed pheasant runs about 2 to 2 1/2 lb, roughly the size of a small chicken, and needs about 45 minutes to an hour of gentle braising. Wild birds are leaner and tougher and want longer; if the legs are still firm, keep going, and accept that the breast will be well done.
- The bacon layer is barding, not seasoningThe recipe lays the bacon in the pan under the bird, to protect the meat and to give the braise fat it otherwise lacks. Use unsmoked or lightly smoked streaky bacon or fresh pork fat; heavily smoked supermarket bacon will dominate a delicate sauce.
- Half a pint of stockRoughly a cup in American measure, or 10 fl oz if the book is working in imperial. It is a shallow braise, not a poach, so the liquid should come no more than a third of the way up the bird.
- Braising temperatureThe recipe gives none. Covered, around 325F works, or hold it at a bare simmer on the stove. A hard boil tightens the leg meat and shreds the skin.
- Chopped vegetables and sweet herbsThe recipe does not specify; a braising base of this kind is usually onion, carrot and celery. "Sweet herbs" of the period generally means a bundle of aromatic herbs such as thyme, parsley and bay, tied or bundled so they come out cleanly.
- "Dry it in front of the fire"This means driving off surface moisture so the skin does not weep into the sauce. An uncovered rest in a 250F oven for five to ten minutes does the same work.
- Soubise sauceOscar assumes the reader knows it: onions sweated in butter without colouring, cooked soft, sieved or blitzed to a purée, and bound with béchamel, sometimes with rice cooked into the onions instead of flour. Season it and finish with cream; it should coat a spoon, not pool.
- ServingOne pheasant serves two generously or three modestly. The sauce is poured around the bird rather than over it, so the skin stays dry, and the bird is carved at the table.
- DonenessTake the thigh to 165F. Pheasant breast is unforgiving past that point, which is the argument for barding it heavily and for jointing the bird if you would rather cook legs and breast to different ends.
Soubise is one of the sauces named for an eighteenth-century French patron rather than for what is in it: the attribution is traditionally to Charles de Rohan, Prince de Soubise, a marshal of France under Louis XV, and as usual with such names the sauce is more likely the work of his kitchen than of the man. What defines it is onion cooked to sweetness without browning and then puréed, a technique that gives body without stock or reduction, and it was a standard partner for white meats and game birds in the classical repertoire Oscar Tschirky was working in. That this entry gives no sauce recipe and no weights tells you who the book was for at the Waldorf: cooks who had soubise on the stove already, and needed only to be told which bird went with it and how to send it out.