No. 2110

Pheasant Truffled—Roasted

Faisan Truffe Roti

Choose a good, fat, well set, and tender pheasant; after it has been drawn and well cleaned, fill its inside and breast with raw, peeled truffles, slightly fried in melted fat pork, and seasoned, proceeding the same as for truffled pullet (No.1992). Lard the pheasant or else wrap it up in fat pork; thrust a small skewer through in order to fasten it to the spit and roast for fifty to sixty minutes according to its tenderness, basting it over with butter. As soon as it is done, detach the bird, untruss it on a dish or else on a thick oval slice of bread browned in butter. Serve with a separate sauce-boat of clear gravy (No.404) and some water-cress.

← No. 2109 Pheasant a la Perigueux Partridge, Pheasant & Grouse No. 2111 Pheasant with Truffles—Larded →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer wrote this for a cook with a spit, a live fire and a standing supply of fresh black truffles. The method translates to an oven without much trouble, provided you deal with the fact that pheasant has almost no fat of its own.

The hinge: fat, or the bird is ruinedEverything in this recipe exists to keep a lean wild bird from drying out — the barding of fat pork, the constant butter basting, the turning spit. Skip the barding and you get a dry breast at any temperature. Sheet fatback, caul fat or thin-sliced pancetta tied over the breast all do the job.
Fat porkSalt pork or unsmoked fatback, cut in thin sheets for barding or in small lardons for larding. Bacon works but brings smoke and cure flavour the original did not intend.
TrufflesFresh black winter truffles, peeled and warmed briefly in the rendered pork fat. Ranhofer gives no quantity; a few ounces for one bird is a reasonable working figure if you are filling both the cavity and the space under the breast skin. Preserved truffles in a jar are the practical modern stand-in; truffle oil is not a substitute here, since the point is the perfume the truffle gives up into the flesh.
The overnight step you have to look upThe step you have to look up -- The recipe sends you to the truffled pullet (No. 1992) for the actual procedure, so read that entry before starting: whatever steeping or resting Ranhofer intends is specified there, not here.
Spit time to oven timeFifty to sixty minutes before an open fire corresponds to roughly 45-55 minutes at 400F for a 2-2.5 lb pheasant, but go by temperature rather than clock: pull it at 165F at the thickest part of the thigh and rest it 10 minutes. Trussed and stuffed, it will run longer than a bare bird.
UntrussSimply means cut and remove the trussing string and skewers before the bird goes to the table.
Clear gravy (No. 404)Ranhofer's clear gravy is a strained, unthickened brown stock reduction — a jus, not a floured gravy. Deglazed pan juices let down with good brown chicken or game stock and strained will serve.
The breadA thick oval slice of bread browned in butter, as the recipe specifies, large enough to sit the bird on. It catches the juices.
YieldOne pheasant serves two generously, three at a stretch when carved off the bone.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) records the food of a restaurant serving American money in a wholly French idiom — hence faisan truffé rôti heading an entry written in English. Truffling a bird by burying peeled truffles inside it and under the skin, then letting it sit in the cold before roasting, is an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French technique; the same procedure gave the period its famous truffled turkey, a Christmas fixture in Paris. Ranhofer's call for a "good, fat, well set" bird reflects a restaurant buying to a standard rather than cooking whatever the gun brought home. The cluster of neighbouring recipes — Périgueux, larded with truffles, truffled and roasted — shows how much of a fine restaurant's game cookery was, in practice, variations on where the truffle went.