COOKING A PHEASANT. 
25 
Linnrean Society, that, at Campsay Ash, where the Phea- 
sants are well fed with potatoes, buckwheat, and barley, a 
cock bird has been killed which weighed four pounds and 
a-half ; and Yarrell records several instances of a similar 
weight having been attained — something like a roast, this. 
The following is the method of cooking an old cock, recom- 
mended from experience, as he says, by Daniel, in his 
^ Eural Sports' : — ' After due keeping, stuff the bird with 
the lean of the inside of a sirloin of beef, cut into thin 
slices, and well seasoned ; the gravy issuing from the beef 
gradually diffuses itself through the llesh of the game, and 
renders it mellow and juicy/ Scott, in his * British Field 
Sports,' says that ' the hen Pheasant is the most juicy 
and fme-flavoured, and that it was customary, in Suffolk, 
to make the addition of oysters to the gravy for hare and 
Pheasant.' And now we have got into the kitchen, we can- 
"fiot help making an allusion or two to the gustatory associ- 
ations of this bird, with the delicate richness of whose flesh 
it apj^ears that the monks of France, in the olden time, 
were well acquainted, since they washed to monopolize it. 
One of their celebrated preachers, about the year 1216, 
represented, in one of his sermons, the Pheasants, Part- 
ridges, and Ortolans as addressing themselves to the clergy, 
and entreating to be eaten by them, and them only, that, 
* incorporated with their glorious bodies, they might be 
raised to heaven, and not go with impious devourers to 
the infernal regions.' At a later period, the Pheasant 
appears to have been held in some measure sacred, since, 
in the year 1415, we find Philip, Duke of Burgundy, at a 
great feast, at which were assembled all his nobility, swore 
a most solemn oath over a roasted Pheasant^ that he would 
march against the Turks, who had just overthrown the 
Grecian empire. His barons all entered into the same 
tremendous engagement ; but none of them, it appears, ever 
stirred towards tlie performance of the vow : so says the au- 
thor of ^ The Sportsman's Cyclopaedia ;' but this we hold to 
be a shameful libel on the stimulating and ennobling power 
of Pheasant's flesh, which is noAv in this country regarded as 
a great epicurean dainty, and has long been so, if we may 
judge by the allusions made to it by our old dramatists. 
