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Roast Grouse with Jelly
Singe, cut the head and feet off, draw, wipe nicely and truss a fine, tender, fat grouse of two and a half pounds. Rub a good half tablespoon salt over the bird. Place it on a small roasting pan; spread a very light tablespoon melted butter over the grouse; pour into the pan one tablespoon hot water. Place the pan in a brisk oven for ten minutes, being careful to baste it with its own liquor once in a while. Open the door of the oven, turn the pan, close and roast for ten minutes again. Remove from the oven, untruss, dress the grouse on a hot dish, decorate with a little watercress around the bird, strain the gravy over it and serve with two good tablespoons currant jelly separately.
A plain fast roast that depends entirely on the bird and on stopping in time. The whole method is twenty minutes in a very hot oven, so the size and fat of the grouse decide whether it works.
- "Brisk oven"Read as a hot oven, on the order of 400-450F; the book itself gives no temperatures. The short roast depends on that heat, and at a moderate 350F the bird is likely to dry out before it colours.
- A two-and-a-half-pound grouseLarger than most birds sold today. Red grouse dress out near 1 lb, ruffed grouse 1 to 1.5 lb; among grouse only the larger species, such as sage or blue grouse, approach this weight. For a 1 lb bird, cut the roasting time by about half and check early.
- DonenessGrouse is traditionally served pink, around 130-135F in the thickest part of the breast; a large bird may reach about that in twenty minutes at high heat, but go by a thermometer rather than the clock. That figure is below the 165F recommended for poultry and game birds; cook to 165F if you prefer, and accept a drier breast.
- The saltA half tablespoon is about 1.5 teaspoons over a 2.5 lb bird, which is within the range of ordinary modern seasoning rather than obviously heavy. Season to taste, and it helps to salt an hour ahead.
- FatWild grouse is lean and the "fat" bird of the original is rare. A tablespoon of butter will not carry twenty minutes of high heat alone; barding the breast with a rasher of bacon or fat salt pork, removed for the last five minutes to let the skin colour, is the usual insurance.
- The tablespoon of waterIt exists to keep the drippings from scorching and to give you something to baste with, not to steam the bird. Add another spoonful if the pan runs dry.
- Trussing and drawingBirds now come dressed. If yours arrives with the head, feet and viscera in place, remove them; "singe" means passing the plucked skin briefly over a flame to burn off pin feathers.
- Resting and servingRest the bird five to ten minutes before carving, tented loosely. One bird of this size serves two; a 1 lb grouse is one portion. Strain the pan juices and serve the currant jelly on the side, not spooned over.
Grouse with jelly is the standard British game-house treatment, appearing here in a grand-hotel idiom: fast, hot roasting, watercress, and a sharp-sweet fruit jelly to cut the iron in dark game meat. Red grouse have resisted commercial rearing, and in Britain the season opens on 12 August, the "Glorious Twelfth" estaurant status dish and put it on autumn menus in the season when fruit jellies were being put up. Currant jelly served separately with feathered game, rather than a sauce, was already old convention by the time this book appeared; the same pairing shows up throughout nineteenth-century English cookery and was carried into American hotel kitchens by chefs trained in that tradition. The instruction to open the oven door and turn the pan halfway is a reminder of ranges that heated unevenly and had no thermostat, so the cook corrected by hand.