Main Ingredients:

See below ingredients and instructions of the recipe

Cooking Preparation of the Recipe:

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.

2 young pheasants 2 tablespoons unsalted butter 2 small shallots,
peeled 2 rashers streaky bacon A little seasoned flour for dredging
Sea 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" posted by Tiffany Hall-Graham From: Tiffany Hall-Graham
Date: 05-27-94 Submitted By DALE SHIPP On 04-20-95

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