No. 2365

Souffle of Pheasant a la Andrew

Souffle de Faisan a la Andrew

Take the cooked meats from a roasted pheasant, suppressing skin, bones and sinews, pound them to a pulp with half as much cooked rice, and also one ounce of very fresh fat liver. Make an essence (No. 389) with the parings; reduce half a pint of espagnole sauce (No. 414); add it to the essence and when very thick put it with the pheasant pulp and strain the whole through a sieve into a tin basin and work well while adding some chopped truffles. Twenty-five minutes before serving heat the preparation in a bain-marie and incorporate into it seven raw egg-yolks one by one, and three ounces of fresh butter, working it in well, and then stir in five egg-whites, beaten to a very stiff froth. Butter a souffle pan (Fig. 182), fill it half full with the preparation and push it into a slack oven; it ought to take from fifteen to twenty minutes to cook; when done, glaze over with game glaze (No. 398) and serve at once.

← No. 2364 Souffle of Partridge a la Haggins Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2366 Souffle of Woodcocks with Truffles →

For the Modern Kitchen

A Delmonico's kitchen recipe that assumes a full brigade and a shelf of prepared bases. The hinge is the egg management: the yolks go in over gentle bain-marie heat and the whites go in cold and stiff at the last moment, and the soufflé is baked gently rather than fast.

Slack ovenA slack oven is the book's low heat, usually taken as somewhere around 300F, though The Epicurean gives no figures. Keep it gentle: a dense game soufflé is better baked slowly than fast, and the 15-20 minutes given assumes the pan is only half filled.
The cross-referencesNo. 389 is a game essence (parings and trimmings simmered down to a concentrate), No. 414 is espagnole, No. 398 a game glaze. In a modern kitchen a good reduced brown game or veal stock stands in for the essence, and a commercial or homemade demi-glace for the espagnole. Reduce half a pint (1 cup) of it until it is genuinely thick and sticky, not merely warm.
"Very fresh fat liver"This means foie gras, one ounce, pounded raw into the meat. Raw duck or chicken liver is a workable substitute; it is there for richness and binding.
Pounding and sievingRanhofer's pounding was done in a mortar; a food processor does the same work. The recipe's own instruction to strain through a sieve should be followed: it removes the sinew that would otherwise show as strings in the finished soufflé.
Rice proportionHalf as much cooked rice as pheasant meat; the recipe does not say whether by weight or by volume. A roasted pheasant yields something in the region of 10-12 oz of usable meat, so roughly 5-6 oz cooked rice, plain and unseasoned.
Egg countsSeven yolks and five whites, as written: the extra yolks enrich a mixture already heavy with meat and sauce, and the smaller number of whites keeps the lift modest. Period eggs were on average smaller than modern large eggs, so slightly fewer of each may come closer in volume.
VesselsA "tin basin" is simply a metal mixing bowl tdash any bowl that sits over simmering water. The "souffl/c pan" is a straight-sided buttered mould; butter it well up the sides so the mixture can climb.
ServingNo yield is given. Glaze the top and send it out immediately; note that the pan is only half filled, so the mould must be considerably larger than the finished mixture.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and the run of soufflés around this entry tdash partridge à la Haggins, pheasant à la Andrew, woodcock with truffles tdash shows the house habit of attaching a regular customer's name to a dish. Ranhofer rarely explains who these people were, and the identities behind most of them are now guesswork; what the names document is a restaurant culture in which a wealthy patron's standing order became a permanent menu listing. The dish itself belongs to the classical French practice of turning roast game into a farce: the bird is cooked, stripped, pounded with a starch and a fat, bound with its own reduced essence, and then lightened with eggs so that it arrives as something airy rather than as a terrine. It is also a frugal technique dressed in luxury tdash the method exists because a roasted bird leaves picked meat and a pile of parings, and a good kitchen was expected to send both back to the table.