No. 2299

Hashed Pheasant

Hachis de Faisan

Chop up the best parts of a cooked and pared pheasant; put the hash into a small saucepan; chop up also three peeled truffles. With the pheasant bones prepare a small game fumet (No. 397) and thicken it with a little half-glaze sauce (No. 413); reduce this with two spoonfuls of Madeira and when very hot pour it over the hash, mixing in the truffles, and heat up the whole without boiling. Dress on a dish and surround with oval game quenelles, cut in two across, bread-crumbed and fried.

← No. 2298 Partridge Hash a la Clemenceau Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2300 Hashed Veal Cakes, Brittany Style →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a kitchen that already has stock, sauce and quenelle forcemeat standing by, so most of the work here happens in the cross-references. Read it as a way of using up a roast pheasant with a concentrated sauce rather than as a self-contained dish.

Do not let it boilThe whole point of the last step is that the meat is already cooked; bringing the sauce to a boil with it will squeeze the pheasant dry and stringy. Heat to just steaming, around 165-170F, and serve at once.
The two cross-referenced saucesThe two cross-references — No. 397 is Ranhofer's game fumet, a concentrated stock drawn from the bones and trimmings; No. 413, half-glaze (demi-glace), is a reduced brown sauce. A practical substitute is a strong reduction of the carcass in good brown chicken or veal stock, thickened with a spoonful of demi-glace or a small beurre manié.
SpoonfulsAn unqualified "spoonful" is generally read as a tablespoon, which would make two spoonfuls of Madeira about 1 fl oz. Use a dry or medium-dry Sercial or Verdelho, not a sweet cooking Madeira.
Truffles"three peeled truffles" points to whole truffles rather than trimmings; a New York kitchen of this date would have been working with imported French truffles, fresh or preserved. A modern cook can use one small fresh truffle shaved in off the heat, or good preserved truffle peelings; truffle oil will taste of nothing but itself against a game sauce.
"Pared"Pared here means trimmed clean: skin, sinew, shot damage and any dry outer meat removed, leaving breast and the best of the leg. Chop by knife to a coarse dice rather than mincing, so the hash keeps texture in the sauce.
The quenelle garnishOval game quenelles are poached forcemeat dumplings made from the raw trimmings with panada and cream, shaped with two spoons. Poach in barely simmering stock, chill until firm, then halve, crumb and fry — attempting to crumb them warm and soft will not work.
YieldOne pheasant gives roughly 12 oz of trimmed meat, which is two generous entrée portions or four in a longer menu. Scale the fumet to about a cup finished sauce so the hash is bound, not soupy.
Sourcing the birdFarmed pheasant sold today is milder and fatter than the hung wild birds Ranhofer had; if you use one, lean harder on the Madeira and the reduction for depth.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) collects the working repertoire Charles Ranhofer built over roughly three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows how such a kitchen handled its own leftovers: the carcass of yesterday's roast pheasant becomes today's fumet, the trimmings become quenelles, and the good meat is served back under a Madeira-scented demi-glace with truffles. Hashes of game filled the "miscellaneous entrées" chapters of nineteenth-century grand-cuisine books precisely because a formal menu ran through many courses and needed small, rich, thoroughly cooked dishes between the larger ones. Pheasant itself was a market bird as much as a sporting one in this period, while truffles and Madeira were the two standard signals that a dish belonged to the expensive end of the card. The instruction to heat without boiling is the mark of a professional reheat: Ranhofer assumes the reader knows that twice-cooked game is ruined by a second real cooking.