Poultry (Volaille)

Spring chickens are usually either grilled or prepared “No. 250, Poëlings” in accordance with one or another of the many recipes applicable to them.

The most perfect example of this class would be the Hamburg chick, were it not for the fact that it is too often kept in confinement and fed on fish, which gives a disagreeable flavour to the young bird.

When it is bred rationally, however, this chick is a great delicacy.

The principal value of the goose from the culinary point of view lies in the fact that it supplies the best, most delicate and firmest foie gras.

Apart from this property, the preciousness of which is truly inestimable, goose is really only served at bourgeois or family tables.

Three varieties of the duck family are recognised in cookery, viz., the Nantes duck, the Rouen duck, and the different kinds of wild duck. The latter are generally used for roasts and in salmis.

The Rouen duck is also served more often as a roast than as an entrée. The characteristic trait of its preparation lies in its being kept very underdone, and it is very rarely braised. It is killed by suffocation, and not by bleeding, which is the usual mode of killing other birds.

The Nantes duck, which is similar to the Aylesbury one, is not so fleshy as the Rouen duck, and may be roasted, No. 250, Poëlings, or braised.

The stag (Fr. Cerf) and the fallow deer (Fr. Daim) supply the only venison that is consumed in England, where the roebuck (Fr. Chevreuil) is not held in very high esteem. True, the latter’s flesh is very often mediocre in quality, and saddles and legs of roebuck often have to be imported from the Continent when they are to appear on an important menu.

On the other hand, venison derived from the stag or red deer and the fallow deer proper is generally of superior quality. The former has perhaps more flavour, but the latter, which is supplied by animals bred in herds on large private estates, has no equal as far as delicacy and tenderness are concerned, while it is covered with white and scented fat, which is greatly appreciated by English connoisseurs.

Although these two kinds of venison are generally served as relevés, they belong more properly to the roasts, and I shall give their recipes a little later on. In any case, only half of the hind-quarters (that is to say, the leg together with that part of the saddle which reaches from it to the floating ribs) is served at high-class tables.

I shall now, therefore, only give the various recipes dealing with roebuck, it being understood that these, if desired, may be applied to corresponding joints of the stag or deer.

Three kinds of partridges are used in Cookery:—the Grey Partridge, which is commonest in flat country, and which is also the most highly esteemed; the Red Partridge, which is to be found in hilly and wooded country; and the Bartavelle (perdix vertevella), which is a somewhat larger species than the two former. To these three kinds may be added the American Colin (Ortix Virginianus), an excellent bird sometimes seen in English markets.

All the recipes given for pheasants may be applied to partridge, and below, I shall only give those which are proper to the latter.

These birds are generally served to the number of two or three for each person.