Probe the galantine from time to time to assure yourself that it be well cooked. When the pheasant is taken out of the cloth, it is to be garnished with twelve ortolans stuffed with the farce as above, and boiled with truffles in the pheasant’s mirepoix, and is to be glaced, as well as the ortolans, with meat glace. Adorn the pheasant with skewers bearing cocks’ combs, crayfish✪ Faisan Lucullus, and truffles, and send to table ; offer the sauce {coulis) in a separate sauce tureen or boat. When a pheasant has been boiled for six hours in altogether more than five bottles of wine, it has no longer any taste of its own ; it is therefore a mere neutral carrier of the taste of its contents. We advise the omission of the absurd extravagance in wine, and the braising of the pheasant in a standard mirepoix without any wine whatever. For roasting, a pheasant should be young, fat, and tender. Some cooks leave the feathers of head and tail on, and 502 THE SPIRIT OF COOKERY protect them during roasting by oiled paper. In our view, such a roast is as disagreeable a sight as the roast hare crouching, and with its head and ears standing up. The roasting of a pheasant in slices of bacon and oiled paper takes about half an hour ; it should be frothed or browned with flour, salt and butter just before being sent to table. Our medical friend Ignotus directs a pheasant cock to be stuffed with the lean part of a sirloin of beef cut in pieces of the size of dice, and spiced with pepper and salt. During roasting, the gravy of the beef diffuses itself through the flesh of the pheasant, thereby rendering it more juicy, tasty, and tender. Veal, being a white meat, may be preferred by some, but requires more flavoured additions. The recipe also says that early in the present century the pheasant was generally larded, but that many persons objected to the. taste of bacon which it acquired by exposure to dry culinary heat. For braising, a pheasant should be well larded, stuffed, garnished, and immersed in standard gravy, and when done be served with a ragout of fat livers, sweetbread, mushrooms, truffles, etc. Pheasant is very suitable for game ines and pasties, and in that form was by cooks of the last century placed into oval potting-pots, cooked to the point, and covered hot with a thick layer of fat aromatized by braising. In this state the pie was kept for months, and preserved as well as tinned meat is nowadays, but, of course, not suitable for transport. The most suitable fat for such preservation is that from a boiled ham which is in course of being cut. The accomplished cook Simpson, founder of the celebrated restaurant in the Strand, gives (in his work on cookery of 1716) only two recipes for pheasant, while in current modern English works we find more than twenty. But on investigation, the latter are seen to be mostly mere varia- VARIETIES OF PARTRIDGES 503 tions of roast and braised forms, and to possess no speci- ficity beyond the sauce or ragout with which they are garnished.

AI-modernized reading of the original text

Probe the galantine from time to time to assure yourself that it be well cooked. When the pheasant is taken out of the cloth, it is to be garnished with twelve ortolans stuffed with the farce as above, and boiled with truffles in the pheasant’s mirepoix, and is to be glaced, as well as the ortolans, with meat glace. Adorn the pheasant with skewers bearing cocks’ combs, crayfish, and truffles, and send to table ; offer the sauce {coulis) in a separate sauce tureen or boat. When a pheasant has been boiled for six hours in altogether more than five bottles of wine, it has no longer any taste of its own ; it is therefore a mere neutral carrier of the taste of its contents. We advise the omission of the absurd extravagance in wine, and the braising of the pheasant in a standard mirepoix without any wine whatever. For roasting, a pheasant should be young, fat, and tender. Some cooks leave the feathers of head and tail on, and protect them during roasting by oiled paper. In our view, such a roast is as disagreeable a sight as the roast hare crouching, and with its head and ears standing up. The roasting of a pheasant in slices of bacon and oiled paper takes about half an hour ; it should be frothed or browned with flour, salt and butter just before being sent to table. Our medical friend Ignotus directs a pheasant cock to be stuffed with the lean part of a sirloin of beef cut in pieces of the size of dice, and spiced with pepper and salt. During roasting, the gravy of the beef diffuses itself through the flesh of the pheasant, thereby rendering it more juicy, tasty, and tender. Veal, being a white meat, may be preferred by some, but requires more flavoured additions. The recipe also says that early in the present century the pheasant was generally larded, but that many persons objected to the taste of bacon which it acquired by exposure to dry culinary heat. For braising, a pheasant should be well larded, stuffed, garnished, and immersed in standard gravy, and when done be served with a ragout of fat livers, sweetbread, mushrooms, truffles, etc. Pheasant is very suitable for game ines and pasties, and in that form was by cooks of the last century placed into oval potting-pots, cooked to the point, and covered hot with a thick layer of fat aromatized by braising. In this state the pie was kept for months, and preserved as well as tinned meat is nowadays, but, of course, not suitable for transport. The most suitable fat for such preservation is that from a boiled ham which is in course of being cut. The accomplished cook Simpson, founder of the celebrated restaurant in the Strand, gives (in his work on cookery of 1716) only two recipes for pheasant, while in current modern English works we find more than twenty. But on investigation, the latter are seen to be mostly mere varia- VARIETIES OF PARTRIDGES tions of roast and braised forms, and to possess no specificity beyond the sauce or ragout with which they are garnished.

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