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Bisque of Grouse, Diana
Cut head and feet off a nice fat grouse, place it on a tin, spread a little butter over, then set in oven for twenty-five minutes. Remove, detach the filets, skin and trim them neatly, then cut them in fine strips and keep on a plate. Place all the bones and trimmings in a saucepan with one pound veal bones, one-half pound chicken bones (if handy), either raw or cooked, a sliced carrot, sliced onion, two sliced branches celery, one bean garlic, two ounces sliced raw ham, one sprig each thyme and marjoram, one bay leaf, two blades mace, four pepper corns and one clove. Moisten with four quarts water, half gill sherry, half gill white wine, season with a tablespoon salt, let very slowly come to boiling point, simmer for two and a half hours, then skim fat from surface of broth.
Soak a half pound bread in water, then press out water, place bread in saucepan with one ounce butter and sharply stir on fire until smooth, then strain game broth through a Chinese strainer into this pan. Sharply whisk till well diluted, season with two saltspoons cayenne and one saltspoon grated nutmeg, mix well and let boil for twenty minutes. Place the breast strips in a small saucepan with six canned, finely sliced mushrooms and a tablespoon brandy, set fire to brandy and shuffle pan over flame until fire goes out, then pour into a soup tureen, strain bisque through a cheesecloth into same and serve.
A classical game soup thickened with a bread panade rather than roux or cream, from an era when a cook could count on a whole bird with its bones. Nothing here is difficult, but several of the measures and vessels need translating.
- The hinge: strain, don't boil the garnishThe bisque gets its texture from bread whisked smooth into the broth and boiled twenty minutes, then passed through cheesecloth. Skipping that final straining leaves it grainy, and the breast strips must go into the tureen raw-side of hot — they are only warmed by the brandy and the poured soup, or they turn to string.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so half a gill of sherry and half a gill of white wine are 1/4 cup each. A saltspoon is 1/4 teaspoon: two saltspoons cayenne is a genuinely hot 1/2 teaspoon, and worth reducing unless you want heat forward.
- Oven temperatureNo number is given. Twenty-five minutes implies a fairly hot oven; something in the 400–425F range is a reasonable modern reading for a small game bird whose breast is going to be sliced and briefly reheated later.
- Chinese strainerA chinois — the conical fine-mesh strainer. A regular fine sieve lined with a layer of muslin does the same job.
- Sourcing the birdWild grouse is hunting-only in most of North America and cannot be bought; check local rules before substituting any wild bird. Farmed pheasant, partridge or two quail give the same character, and the veal and chicken bones are doing most of the structural work in the broth anyway.
- BreadHalf a pound of bread is best read as plain stale white crumb rather than a modern enriched sandwich loaf, though the recipe does not specify. Soak it, then squeeze hard — wet bread will slacken the finished soup.
- Blades of mace and a bean of garlicA blade of mace is one piece of the dried aril; if ground is all you have, reckon somewhere between a quarter and a half teaspoon per blade, as the published equivalences vary. A "bean" of garlic is a single clove.
- Yield and reductionFour quarts of water simmered two and a half hours should leave roughly two and a half to three quarts of broth, depending how hard it simmers. The recipe gives no yield; finished, it would serve perhaps eight to ten as a first course.
- Flaming the brandyTake the small pan off the heat before adding the tablespoon of brandy, then light it; "shuffle the pan" means keep it moving so the mushrooms and breast do not scorch while the alcohol burns off.
Alexander Filippini's The International Cook Book (1906) belongs to the grand-hotel tradition he learned at Delmonico's in New York, where a dish tagged Diana was often taken to signal game — the name generally traced to the Roman goddess of the hunt, and used in nineteenth-century French kitchens for garnishes and sauces built on venison, hare or feathered game. The soup itself is a bisque in the older sense of the word: before the term narrowed to mean a creamy shellfish purée, a bisque was any rich strained soup bound with pounded meat or bread, and thickening with a soaked bread panade is a technique that runs back through medieval European cookery long before roux became standard. The recipe also reflects a market that no longer exists, one where a cook could order a grouse whole, with veal and chicken bones thrown in for the asking, and could reasonably expect canned mushrooms to be the more convenient option.