No. 2072

Grouse or Prairie Hens Roasted with Gravy, Fried Bread-Crumbs or Apple Sauce

Tetras ou Poules de Prairie Rotis au Jus, Mie de Pain Frite ou Sauce aux Pommes

Select some grouse and after picking, singeing and drawing, truss them without barding for roasting (No. 179), run a skewer through and fasten this firmly to the spit, then roast before a good fire or they may be put in a baking pan, smeared over with fat and roasted in the oven, but in either case they need basting frequently with melted butter. When almost done, salt them over and as soon as they are finished (which will take from twenty to twenty-five minutes), like all black meats these should be cooked rare, untruss and dress on a crouton of bread cut so that they stand plumb on it, and serve some clear gravy (No. 404) separately or replace it by apple sauce (No. 428), served the same, or a bread sauce (No. 438), may be substituted or surround with fried bread-crumbs prepared as follows: Brown some slices of bread in the oven and when of a good color and very dry, pound and pass through a fine wire sieve, mix these crumbs with a little butter, put it into a sautoir and set in the oven to fry until of a nice color.

← No. 2071 Grouse, Prairie Hens or Ptarmigan, Broiled Partridge, Pheasant & Grouse No. 2073 Grouse or Prairie Hens a la Tzarina—Breasts →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a spit before an open fire and a butcher who will hand over birds with heads on. The method translates directly to a hot oven, provided you accept his central point: grouse is served rare or it is ruined.

The hinge: cook it rareTwenty to twenty-five minutes is for small birds in a fierce fire. Roast at 450F and pull the birds when the breast reads 125-130F, then rest ten minutes. Grouse breast has almost no intramuscular fat and turns dry and livery within a few degrees of overcooking.
"Black meats"The term answers to the French category of dark-fleshed game: grouse, woodcock, snipe, wild duck. It is the category, not the color of the cooked bird, that dictates rare service.
Without bardingNo. 179 is the cross-reference for trussing birds for roasting. Ranhofer specifies no barding here and relies on frequent basting with melted butter instead; a shallow pan, a rack, and butter brushed on every five minutes does the same work.
Grouse and prairie hens"Prairie hen" is the greater prairie chicken, now scarce and protected across much of its former range. Ruffed grouse from a hunter, or guinea fowl, are the practical substitutes; guinea fowl is leaner than chicken but not as dark as true grouse.
SautoirA straight-sided shallow pan. For the crumbs, a skillet over medium heat works better than the oven — the butter browns unevenly in a slack oven and the crumbs scorch at the edges.
The crumbsOven-dried bread pounded through a sieve gives a coarse, sandy crumb quite unlike packaged breadcrumbs. Dry the slices at 300F until brittle and pale gold, then pulse briefly; you want grit, not powder.
The croutonCut a thick slab of firm white bread wide enough that the bird sits level, fry it in butter or the roasting fat, and set it under the bird to catch the juices. It is a plate, not a garnish.
YieldOne grouse or prairie hen per person; a larger bird will serve two. Allow half a cup of gravy, apple sauce or bread sauce per diner, passed separately as directed.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) records what a Manhattan restaurant of that era could actually buy. Wild game arrived by rail in quantity — prairie chickens shipped east from Illinois, Iowa and the Dakotas by the barrel, cheap enough in season to appear on ordinary bills of fare. The market hunting that supplied those barrels is the reason the greater prairie chicken is now a conservation concern, and the reason a page like this reads as a document of loss as much as a set of instructions. The accompaniments — clear gravy, apple sauce, bread sauce, fried crumbs — are lifted wholesale from English game cookery, where versions of the same set had long attended roast grouse and partridge.