No. 2111

Pheasant with Truffles—Larded

Faisan Pique aux Truffes

Break the breastbone of a clean pheasant to facilitate the removal of the bone, and fill up the empty space with baking forcemeat (No.81) mixed with a little raw forcemeat (No.91), and raw, chopped truffles added; sew the skin underneath the breast and truss with the legs pushed in the thigh; this is done by removing the drumstick and pushing the leg bone back into this space; put the pheasant in a narrow saucepan lined with fat pork, salt over and besprinkle with melted butter. Cook for forty-five minutes while covered, basting over frequently, and lastly glaze it, then drain. Untruss it on a rice foundation (Fig. 9a) poached on a dish and surround this with round, peeled truffles cooked in wine; pour into the bottom of the dish a few spoonfuls of brown sauce (No.414) reduced with the truffle liquid and a few spoonfuls of Madeira wine. Accompany this entree with a sauce-boatful of the same sauce.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's pheasant is a poêlé — a bird cooked covered in butter and pork fat in a tight pan, somewhere between roasting and braising. Most of the work is in the boning and stuffing; the cooking itself is short and needs watching.

The hinge: keep the pan tightA "narrow saucepan" means one barely wider than the bird, lined with fat pork and covered. The point is to trap steam and butter so the lean breast bastes itself. In a roomy roasting pan the moisture escapes and a pheasant dries out inside half an hour.
Larded, but actually bardedThe French title says piqué aux truffes — the breast studded with slivers of truffle pushed under the skin with a larding needle, which is what the name refers to and what the printed text omits. The fat pork lining the pan is barding, a separate operation. Slide truffle slices under the skin before trussing if you want the dish the title promises.
The forcemeat cross-referencesNo. 81 is the book's baking (gratin) forcemeat, No. 91 its raw forcemeat; neither parent recipe is reproduced here. Failing them, use roughly three parts of a firm gratin-style stuffing to one part raw ground chicken or veal, with chopped raw truffle folded in.
Boning the breastBreaking the breastbone loose lets you lift out the keel and fill the cavity from the front, so the bird carves in even slices. A boning knife and the bird chilled well makes this far easier than the terse instruction suggests.
Timing and donenessForty-five minutes covered suits a 2 to 2 1/2 lb bird over a low flame; the recipe keeps it on the stove in a covered pan rather than in an oven. Because it is stuffed with raw forcemeat, go by temperature: the forcemeat should reach 165F at its centre, and the breast is best taken off at that point. Pheasant past 170F turns to string.
To glazeUncover at the end, brush with reduced brown stock or the pan juices boiled down to a syrup, and let it take colour for a few minutes. A large professional kitchen of Ranhofer's sort kept glace de viande on hand; a well-reduced homemade stock does the same job.
The rice foundationFig. 9a is a socle — a moulded plinth of stiff poached rice that raises the bird on the platter. It was decoration, not eating, and can be skipped entirely; serve the pheasant on the sauce instead.
Truffles and the sauceNo. 414 is the book's brown sauce, of the espagnole type. Reduce it with the wine the truffles were cooked in plus a few spoonfuls of Madeira. Fresh black truffles at the volume implied here are a serious expense; good tinned truffles with their juice will carry the sauce, though they will not perfume the stuffing the same way.
YieldOne stuffed pheasant serves two generously, three at a formal table where it is one course among many.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it reads like a working kitchen's index rather than a book for home cooks — hence the numbered cross-references to forcemeats and sauces made in bulk elsewhere in the house. Pheasant with truffles was standard luxury game cookery of the period: the bird is lean and inclined to dryness, so the classic treatments all involve fat, enclosure and short cooking, while the truffle supplied the aroma that the bird itself lacks. The pairing is generally traced to French practice, where truffles were slipped under the skin a day ahead so the scent could penetrate the flesh. The rice socle is a reminder that a Delmonico's entree was as much architecture as food; such plinths, sometimes of rice, sometimes of carved fat or bread, went out with the elaborate service that required them.