SC - Pheasant recipe

[Philippa Alderton]

On Thu, 19 Nov 1998 12:54:52 -0500 "Knott, Deanna"
<Deanna.Knott at GSC.GTE.Com> writes:
>I just spent some time looking through the Miscellany and the 
>Florilegium. I was looking for some recipes on how to cook game birds,
>pheasant in particular.
>
Sorry it took so long, but I had several and had to go find which disk
they were on, convert them, etc.  Finally, here they are:


Caitlin nicFhionghuin
House Oak & Thistle


   Small Birds in a Pie                England, 1378
      Yield: 4 servings

      1 lb (2 cups) minced pork
      2 ea Hard-boiled eggs; chopped
    1/2 c  Grated cheese
      1 ts Allspice
      1 tb Sugar
    1/8 ts Saffron
      1 ts Salt
      1 lb Pastry
      2 ea To 3 quail, cut in half (May substitute chicken)
      2 tb Butter
    1/2 c  Stock

  "Tartes of Flesh"  from _The Forme of Cury_, 1378

     Mix together the pork, eggs, cheese, sugar, and seasonings.  Line a 
9" pie-dish with half of the pastry. Spread the mixture.  Brown the
pieces of fowl in butter and lay them on top. Pour in the stock. Cover
with a pastry lid and bake at 375f for 35 to 40 minutes.

  QUESTION: does "conynges"=rabbit?

 The original: " Take pork sodden and grind it small, take eggs boiled
hard and put thereto with cheese ground, take good powder and whole spice
sugar, safron, and salt and  do thereto make a coffin as to hold the same
and do this therein and  poant it with the small birds and conyngs
(rabbits?) and hew them in  small pieces and bake it as tofore
and serve it forth."

  From _The Forme of Cury_, 1378 Compiled and updated by Maxime
de la  Falaise in _Seven Centuries of English Cooking_ Grove Press,1992.
 
 Farsed Fesaunt - Pheasant Stuffed with Spiced Apples

  Mix basil, rosemary, thyme, and salt with the oats. Preheat oven to
  375 degrees F. Mix in dried apples and figs. Stir stock into oats and
  fruit. Stuff bird with mixture. Rub skin with butter. Bake at 375
  degrees F for 2 hours or until very tender. Grate apple peel and
  reserve. Remove core and discard. Chop or cut raw apple into small
  slivers and mix well with apple peel. Squeeze lemon juice onto apple
  to prevent its browning. Remove stuffing from bird. Mix in raw apples
  and serve immediately with warm fowl.

  From _Fabulous Feasts - Medieval Cookery and Ceremony_ by
Madeleine  Pelner Cosman   George Braziller, Inc.   1976, 1992 ISBN
  0-8076-0832-7 


 Roast Pheasant
Yield: 6 servings

      2          Young pheasants
      2  tb     Unsalted butter
      2  sm    Shallots, peeled
      2  sl      Streaky bacon
                   Seasoned flour/dredging
                   Sea salt
 Fesaunt rost.  Lete a fesaunt blode in the mouth, and lete hym blede
to deth; & pulle hym, and draw hym, & kutt a-wey the necke by the
body, & the legges by the kne, and perbuille hym, and larde hym, and
putt the knese in the vent: and rost him, & reise hym vpp, hys legges
& hys wynges as off an henne; and no sauce butt salt.

 We are more humane than our ancestors where slaughtering
pheasants is concerned, but the preparation of the birds for plain
roasting is probably much  the same. Pre-heat the oven to
200C/400F/Gas Mark 6. Put half the butter and a shallot inside each
pheasant and cover the breast with a  rasher of bacon. Wrap each bird
in a separate piece of foil. Then put  them side by side on a rack in a
roasting-tin and roast in the oven  for 30 minutes. Remove them from
the oven, take off the foil and dredge with seasoned flour, baste and
return to the oven for another 10 minutes, by which time they should
be golden-brown. Serve with coarse sea salt in small ramekins or egg
cups as a condiment or sauce.

  Flavouring for Game Birds:  Other 'sauces' were sometimes offered 
with game birds.  One for pheasant consisted of white sugar with 
mustard powder, blended with vinegar until semi-liquid.  Another, for 
a roasted crane, was made by combining ground black pepper, ground 
ginger, mustard powder, salt and vinegar.  A 'sauce' of minced  parsley
and onions with ground garlic and vinegar was suitable for  pigeons.

  All these and several others may have been ways of flavouring 
leftovers or meat cooked for expediency--for example, needing 
short-term preserving-- because the flesh was almost always minced 
before the strong 'sauce' was mixed in.

  from The Medieval Cookbook by Maggie Black Chapter 6, "The Court
of  Richard II" 

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