Broiled Pheasant

The Book of Household Management · Beeton, Mrs. (Isabella Mary) · 1861
Source
The Book of Household Management
Time
Cook: 10 min Total: 30 min
Yield
4.0 – 5.0 persons
Status
success · extracted 13 days ago
Not a recipe
No
Ingredients (6)
Instructions (4)
  1. Cut the legs off at the first joint, and the remainder of the bird into neat pieces.
  2. Put them into a frying-pan with a little lard, and when browned on both sides, and about half done, take them out and drain them.
  3. Brush the pieces over with egg, and sprinkle with bread crumbs with which has been mixed a good seasoning of cayenne and salt.
  4. Broil them over a moderate fire for about 10 minutes, or rather longer, and serve with mushroom-sauce, sauce piquante, or brown gravy, in which a few game-bones and trimmings have been stewed.
Original Text
BROILED PHEASANT (a Breakfast or Luncheon Dish). 1043. INGREDIENTS.—1 pheasant, a little lard, egg and bread crumbs, salt and cayenne to taste. Mode.—Cut the legs off at the first joint, and the remainder of the bird into neat pieces; put them into a fryingpan with a little lard, and when browned on both sides, and about half done, take them out and drain them; brush the pieces over with egg, and sprinkle with bread crumbs with which has been mixed a good seasoning of cayenne and salt. Broil them over a moderate fire for about 10 minutes, or rather longer, and serve with mushroom-sauce, sauce piquante, or brown gravy, in which a few game-bones and trimmings have been stewed. Time.—Altogether 1/2 hour. Sufficient for 4 or 5 persons. Seasonable from the 1st of October to the beginning of February. THE HEIGHT OF EXCELLENCE IN A PHEASANT.—Things edible have their degrees of excellence under various circumstances: thus, asparagus, capers, peas, and partridges are best when young. Perfection in others is only reached when they attain maturity: let us say, for example, melons and nearly all fruits (we must except, perhaps, the medlar), with the majority of those animals whose flesh we eat. But others, again, are not good until decomposition is about to set in; and here we may mention particularly the snipe and the pheasant. If the latter bird be eaten so soon as three days after it has been killed, it then has no peculiarity of flavour; a pullet would be more relished, and a quail would surpass it in aroma. Kept, however, a proper length of time,—and this can be ascertained by a slight smell and change of colour,—then it becomes a highly, flavoured dish, occupying, so to speak, the middle distance between chicken and venison. It is difficult to define any exact time to "hang" a pheasant; but any one possessed of the instincts of gastronomical science, can at once detect the right moment when a pheasant should be taken down, in the same way as a good cook knows whether a bird should be removed from the spit, or have a turn or two more.
Notes
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