CHAPTER XII.
GAME AND PASTRY.
Game in England is declared to include hares, pheasants, partridges, grouse, heath or moor game, black game, and bustard. Snipe, quail, landrail, woodcock, and conies are not game; but they can only be taken or killed by certificated persons. Game has been always prized amongst us at table; and it has been a subject of legislation from the Conquest to the present time. In the time of Queen Mary, there was not only a keeper of pheasants and partridges to the queen, but likewise a taker. The kings of England had also, formerly, a swanherd; and Sir E. Coke makes this office one of his titles in the Fourth Institute.[18] The 17 chap. of Henry VIII. is entitled, “The forfeiture for taking of fesants and partridges, or the eggs of hawkes or swans.” That the gentry, even in those early days, were imbued with sound common sense, and could regard the pleasurable as well as the palatable and profitable side of a question, will appear from the preamble to this statute. It recites the great injury to lords of manors, not only from the loss of the pleasure and disport to their friends and servants, but likewise the loss to their kitchen and table. So that in 1494, ideas of gourmandise and good cheer were just as rife as in 1864.
Falconry, says the Hon. Daines Barrington,[19] first occasioned the system of game laws; and hence, herons were held in high esteem, being the noblest bird the falcon could fly at. There can be no doubt whatever that, less than three centuries ago, herons were eaten both in England and France. Our ancestors, indeed, were much less delicate and less particular as to the tenderness of their food than their descendants, for they ate not only the heron, but the crane, the crow, the cormorant, and the bittern. In an old cookery book of Taillevant, who was first cook of Charles VII. of France, there are receipts for dressing these last-named birds. In the statutes of Bordeaux, made in 1585, with a view to regulate the sale of game, in the regulation of Henry II. in 1549, for the same object the heron is counted among the number of birds allowed to be brought to market. When Charles IX. passed through Amiens, he was offered, among other birds, twelve herons, six bitterns, and six swans. Bélon, in his history of birds, written in 1554, says, that the bittern, though of a nauseous taste at first, “est cependant entre les délices françoises;” and Liebant calls the heron “une viande royale.” Héronnières were, in his day, as common among French gentlemen as were faisanderies in 1760 or 1780. Three centuries ago, vultures and falcons, and other birds of prey, were also eaten in France—now, and for a century and a half, so friande and dainty in its tastes. In Auvergné, Bélon states that in winter every one ate of a kind of eagle, named boudrée, or gorian; though he admits owls and birds feeding on carrion were not served at table. It is singular that the very people who then ate herons, vultures, and cormorants, would not touch young game. They regarded leverets and young partridges as indigestible, and only partook of old hares and old birds. Henry Stevens states that the eating of young game was introduced by the Ambassador of France, who had sojourned at Venice. Game among our neighbours, the French, is divided into gros gibier and menu gibier. In the gros gibier is comprised the buck, doe, stag, wild boar, &c.; and the menu gibier comprehends pheasant, wild duck, teal, larks, ring-doves, partridges, woodcocks, quails, ortolans, thrushes, grouse, red-breasts, lapwings, &c. French writers also speak of le gibier à poil, in which are comprised hares, leverets, and rabbits. It will be at once seen that the French consider as game many small birds on which we set little value. In the excellence and succulence of our game, and the number of our game preserves, we beat the world. The only countries that can be compared to England in the excellence and abundance of game are Hungary, Styria, Carinthia, and parts of the Basque provinces, Gallicia, and Spanish and Portuguese Estremadura.
Southey, who visited Spain in 1797, speaks thus in his letters of having a woodcock for supper at Merida:—“At Merida we had a woodcock for supper, which we trussed ourselves; but the old woman of the house brought up the bird sprawling, told us that they had forgot to cut off the rump and draw it, and then poked her finger in to show how clean the inside was.”
Nearly thirty years after this date I can myself bear testimony to the abundance of game in parts of Spain, and to the excellent manner in which a salmi of partridges is occasionally served in the Peninsula. It is one of the few dishes in Spanish cookery which an Englishman can relish.
Game is a light food, and easy of digestion; and there is no country in the world in which it is plainly roasted so well as in England. But in sautés, filets, or cutlets of game, in salmis of game aux truffes, à la rocambole, in crepinettes, or à la provençale, we are not to be spoken of in the same century with the French. There are even tolerably simple ways of dressing game à la française, in which some of our French cooks are no adepts. I will not speak of perdreau aux choux, for I deem it profanation to serve cabbage with so admirable a bird; but you cannot always trust a good English cook to serve a partridge or a quail à la financière. Our game pies, more especially in country houses, are good, but they are not to be compared to the pâté de bécassines aux truffes, or the pâtés des cailles aux fines herbes, or to the pâté de godiveau aux champignons, or aux truffes. The chévreuil à France is very inferior to our venison, and it is only the sauce poivrade, the truffles, or the filet à l’italienne, or à la Marechale that makes it eatable. It may be asked why we cannot have these dishes in England? There is no reason why we should not have them, if schools of French cookery are multiplied, and families will go to the expense of the Madeira and Malaga wines, the truffles, the morels, the button mushrooms, and the bunches of sweet herbs. These things are expensive in London; and there are few so prone to obey the vulgar appetite of the belly—to use a phrase of the Roman historian, Sallust—that the outlay is not incurred. Our peers, our country gentlemen, as well as our wealthy merchants, are quite content to have their game well-roasted, which means not overdone. It is one of the old canons of cookery to spit the game when the first course is removed: “Quand le premier service est fini il faut mettre le gibier à la broche.” I cannot choose but think, however, that we may easily vary our roast hare and boiled rabbit by fillets and cutlets of both, by civets of hare, and by salmis and scollops of pheasant à la Bourguinotte, and à la Richelieu, or fillets of partridge à la Perigird, or à la Lucullus.
Pheasant is often a dry bird in England, and oftener so in France; but I would not order a woodcock en salmi, unless the bird were of venerable age. Nonius, who wrote about 240 years ago, tells us there are two sorts of pheasants in France; one is called Royal and the other is called bruyant. Here are his words:—“Galli duplex phasianorum genus statunt, Regium unum quod prestantius est de quo jam diximus, alterum quod Bruyant vocant.”[20] But in this the learned writer is probably mistaken, and confounds bruyant with Coq de bruyère. Grimod de la Reynière says:—“A pheasant should be suspended by the tail, and eaten when he detaches himself from this incumbrance. It is thus that a pheasant hung on Shrove Tuesday is susceptible of being spitted on Easter-day.”
I have not said anything on pastry or cold entrées, because the pastry-cook and the cook constitute, in France and in most continental countries, two different trades or employments. In England, however, the cook and the pastry-cook are often, in considerable establishments, amalgamated; so that the perfect or professed cook should be conversant with every branch of his or her profession, as few establishments, even of the highest in rank or the most wealthy, include a cook and a confectioner, or pastry-cook. Those, therefore, who, in this country, are anxious to excel in their art, ought to be acquainted with the various preparations of pastry, by which I mean not merely tarts, puddings, but feuilletage, or puff-paste, and paste for hot and cold pies, paste for timbals, half-puff paste, and paste for heavy cakes, &c.
From Carème’s observations on making paste, one may conceive that, to his thinking, the operation was difficult. “The soul of the operation,” says he, “consists in having the paste well mingled; for, should there be any neglect in the preparation, a bad result only can be obtained: also, if the pastry, when baked, possesses a colour the least objectionable to the eye of the connoisseur, it will be no less disagreeable to the palate, being heavy and indigestible; therefore the manipulation should be perfect, both in the oven and on the table. It is easier to bake than to make it. The oven claims, it is true, care, assiduity, and practice; but the composition permits not mediocrity—requiring memory, taste and skill—for, from its perfect seasonings, and the due amalgamation of the different bodies of which it is composed, it receives its good or bad qualities. The oven is one simple and self-same thing—the compositions are varied to infinity.”
In most moderate establishments, where a regular dinner is given, the ordinary cook, with the aid of a first-rate man cook, has quite enough to do in preparing the soup, fish, meats, fowl, and game, without being embarrassed with patties and pastry. I would therefore suggest that in establishments where there are not first-rate assistants, and a sufficient number of them, patties, and all kinds of pastry, jellies, ices, &c., should be procured from the confectioner. There are many first-rate confectioners who undertake this duty, such as Gunter, Grange, Bridgman, Waud, and others. A great deal of trouble will thus be saved to the host; and unless his kitchen and his servants be all of a superior description, it is likely the small patties, pastry, ices, and confectionary, will be better from the confectioner’s than if prepared at home. Of course, every professed cook ought to know how to make pâtés of venison and of all sorts of game and fish; but with what the French call pâtisserie it is different, and entertainers who wish these articles will do well to order them from a confectioner.
For small family dinners every good cook should know how to make apricot puffs, orange or rum jelly, blanc-manger, tourtes, apple tarts, soufflés, iced puddings, gauffres, nougats, merlitons, Charlottes à la Russe, gooseberry and all tartlets; but this is a widely different thing from undertaking this duty for a dinner of fourteen, sixteen, or twenty persons, in addition to the two or three courses. For my own part, I have remarked that the people most in the habit of dining out eat very sparingly of pâtés and pastry.
Under the head pâtisseries, the French in general comprehend, first, les pâtés chauds et tourtes d’entrées. Secondly, les pâtés froids, les gateaux, les pâtisseries sucrées. Thirdly, les pâtisseries seches ou croquantes, eaten at dessert. In early ages, in France, the cabaretiers, who furnished food to the traveller, furnished also pastry. Saint Louis, in 1270, regulated this trade by certain statutes; but there was not a regular company of pâtissiers till 1567. One hundred and fifty years ago Pithiviers was celebrated for its pâtés of larks; Perigueux, for its pâtés of truffled partridges; Amiens, for its turkeys and geese; Angers, for its poulardes; Versailles, for its foies gras, and Strasbourg and Toulouse, for its pâtés of foies d’oies. It was not till 1780 that a pâtissier of Paris invented pâtés de jambon. When l’Hôpital was Chancellor of France, he forbade the sale of petits pâtés in Paris, on the ground, “qu’un pareil commerce favorisait d’un côté la gourmandise et de l’autre la paresse.”