Pheasant Soup

Ingredients

• 2 whole pheasants, well-kept
• 5 pints strong beef broth or stock
• flour for dredging
• 0.5 as much as pheasant breast fresh butter
• 0.5 as much as pheasant breast dry bread-crumbs
• to taste cayenne pepper
• to taste salt
• moderately pounded mace
• moderately grated nutmeg
• 3 or 4 whole eschalots (shallots)
• 2 or 3 whole egg yolks
• optional rice-flour and arrow-root
• 0.5 dozen eschalots (shallots)
• 1 small head celery

Instructions

1. Half roast the two pheasants, flouring them rather thickly when first laid to the fire, for 20 to 25 minutes until they are nearly cold.
2. As soon as the pheasants are nearly cold, take all the flesh from the breasts, put it aside, and keep it covered from the air.
3. Carve down the remainder of the birds into joints and bruise the bodies thoroughly.
4. Stew the whole gently in five pints of strong beef broth for two to three hours.
5. Strain off the soup and press as much of it as possible from the pheasants.
6. Let the soup cool.
7. Strip the skins from the pheasant breasts, mince them small, and pound them to the finest paste with half as much fresh butter and half as much dry bread-crumbs.
8. Season the paste well with cayenne, sufficiently with salt, and moderately with pounded mace and grated nutmeg.
9. Boil three or four eschalots tender in a little of the soup, leave them till cold, and mince them.
10. Add the minced eschalots to the forcemeat paste.
11. Moisten the mixture with the yolks of two or three eggs.
12. Roll the forcemeat into small balls of equal size and dust a little flour upon them.
13. Skim all the fat from the soup.
14. Heat the soup in a clean stewpan and ascertain that it is properly seasoned with salt and cayenne.
15. When the soup boils, throw in the forcemeat balls and poach them from ten to twelve minutes.