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Stewed Grouse
Take a brace of grouse and truss and stuff them. Place one-fourth pound of butter or good dripping into a fryingpan and fry in it while it is quite hot, first one grouse and then the other, turning them so as to brown them all over. In the meantime have one-half pint of good gravy heating in a small saucepan. When both birds are browned put them in a large saucepan, pour the hot gravy over, place the lid on tight and let them stew very gently for an hour until they are tender; then put them on a hot dish and cover, to keep the heat and flavor in. Let the gravy cool a little, skim off the fat that rises and strain it. Put it over the fire again, stir in enough brown flour to thicken, and boil hard for five minutes; skim again, place the birds back in the gravy and let them get quite hot, but do not let the gravy boil after they are put in. Place them on a hot dish, pour a little of the gravy over, and serve the balance in a small tureen. Green peas and currant jelly may also be served separate.
Supreme of Grouse, Richelieu Style Singe, draw and wipe three grouse, removing the skin from the breasts. With a sharp knife make an incision on the top of each breastbone from end to end. Carefully cut off the entire breasts on both sides, including the small wing bone, taking care not to leave a particle of meat on the bones. Remove the small fillets found under the breasts, putting them one side for further use. Make an incision in the breasts at the thinnest side, about three inches long, and one inch in depth, season them inwardly with pepper and slat, stuff them with chicken forcemeat mixed with two truffles and four mushrooms, all finely sliced, and put them into a buttered sautepan. Gently press the small fillets, using the fingers to give them a hollow shape. Make six slanting, small incisions on the top of each, and insert in them a small piece of smoked beef, one-half inch in diameter; moisten slightly the top of the breasts with water, place a fillet lengthwise on them, and sprinkle over a little clarified butter, using a feather brush. Pour into the pan, but not over the meat, one-fourth wineglassful of Madeira wine and two tablespoonfuls of mushroom catsup, lightly cover the pan and place it in a hot oven for ten minutes. Arrange the supremes on a hot dish, and serve with a little Perigueux sauce boiled for three minutes with one teacupful of tomato sauce, in a sauceboat.
Two recipes have run together on this page: the plain stewed grouse, and a far more elaborate Supreme of Grouse, Richelieu Style. Both assume a kitchen with wild game hanging in the larder and a stockpot always going.
- Sourcing the birdsA brace is two birds. Wild grouse cannot be bought in the United States, since commercial traffic in wild game birds is prohibited; imported Scottish grouse is occasionally available, otherwise use two young pheasants, four quail, or two small guinea fowl. Cornish hens are the easiest stand-in.
- "Good gravy"Not pan gravy but half a pint (one cup) of strong brown stock or demi-glace, already made and simmering. Without it the stew has no body, since a whole hour of gentle cooking in water will leave the sauce thin and the lean meat washed out.
- Brown flourFlour toasted dry in a pan or a low oven until the color of cinnamon. It thickens less powerfully than raw flour, so expect to need a little more than you would for a white roux, and it contributes most of the deep color.
- The one rule for the sauceDo not let the gravy boil once the birds go back in. Reheating game hard in liquid squeezes it dry and turns the breast fibrous; bring the sauce to just below a simmer and hold it there until the birds are hot through.
- An hour of stewingThat timing suits an older wild bird. A farmed pheasant or a Cornish hen will be tender in 35 to 45 minutes, and the breast will be sawdust at sixty. Check the leg joint early and pull the birds when it loosens.
- Oven for the supremesA hot oven here means 425 to 450F. Ten minutes at that heat cooks a boned, stuffed grouse breast through; a pheasant supreme, being thicker, will want twelve to fifteen.
- Old measures in the second recipeA wineglassful is about two fluid ounces, so a quarter of one is roughly a tablespoon of Madeira. A teacupful is variously reckoned at anywhere from half a cup to three-quarters of a cup. "Slat" in the original is a typesetting slip for salt.
- Périgueux sauceDemi-glace finished with chopped truffle and Madeira. If truffle is out of reach, a good demi-glace with Madeira and mushroom trimmings gives the right register; truffle oil does not.
- YieldThe stew serves two to four depending on the size of the birds. The supremes give six portions from three grouse, and the reserved small fillets are used as the decorated cap on each one rather than being cooked separately.
Oscar Tschirky's book appeared in 1896, at the end of the era when American hotels and restaurants bought wild game by the barrel from market hunters; the Lacey Act of 1900 curtailed interstate commerce in wild birds and eventually made a menu like this impossible to reproduce. Grouse was among the prized birds of that trade, and a Waldorf kitchen would have had it both ways, as here: a plain braise for the man who wanted his bird whole with peas and currant jelly, and beside it a boned, stuffed, truffled supreme in the full Escoffier-era manner. The garnish names carry their own history. Dishes labeled Richelieu and sauces called Périgueux belong to the French classical vocabulary of the period, the latter named for Périgord and its truffles, and their presence on an American hotel menu was a claim to Parisian standing as much as a description of what arrived on the plate.