Pheasant with Sour Cherry Sauce

Roast pheasant with sour cherry sauce and roasted onions

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City/Region: Transylvania

Time Period: 16th Century

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One of the horrific stories about Vlad the Impaler is when, in 1459, he sacked the Transylvanian city of Brasov, rounded up the 30,000 citizens, and had them all impaled on spikes while he ate a meal in the center and dipped his bread in the blood of his victims. But did he really consume human blood? Modern scientific analysis of the saliva on letters written by Vlad suggest that he was, at least at one point in his life, a vegetarian. I think he was not eating human blood, but something like this sour cherry sauce from around 100 years later.

This is perhaps one of the best sauces I’ve made on the channel, and would also go well with pork or duck. The sour cherries were expensive, but blend so well with the other ingredients to make a distinct sourness that is balanced by sweetness. As with all historical recipes that don’t give us specific measurements, feel free to adjust the amounts to your taste and make it your own. If you opt to use sweet cherries, you may want to add in some vinegar for acidity.

“Sour Cherry Sauce
Clean the sour cherry in a clean pot. Add some wine; a bit of white bread and honey, then cook it, pass it through a strainer into a plate and add some black pepper; but don’t add clove, add cinnamon instead; cook it together, but don’t make it too thick.”

— The Prince of Transylvania’s Court Cookbook, 16th century

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Ingredients:

Sauce

• 1 lb (450 g) sour cherries*
• 1 cup (235 ml) wine, I used a sweet white Tokaji
• 1 cup, or a couple of good handfuls stale white bread crumbs, I tore up some stale bread for this
• 1/4 cup (90 g) honey
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Pheasant

• 1 about 2 lb (1 kg) pheasant
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 tablespoon olive oil or clarified butter
• 1 large onion
• Black pepper

*Sour cherries can be very difficult (and expensive) to get, so feel free to use regular cherries. The sauce will taste different, but I think it will still be delicious. In this case, you may want to add some vinegar for acidity.

Instructions:

1. For the sauce: If your cherries are frozen, thaw them, then pit the cherries, making sure to save any juice that comes out of them. Put the cherries and their juice into a large saucepan.
2. Add the wine, bread crumbs, and honey. Set the saucepan over medium heat and stir everything together, breaking up the cherries to get as much juice out as possible. Bring it to a simmer and simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
3. After 20 minutes, mash the cherries with a potato masher, then pass the sauce through a sieve, pressing out as much of the sauce as possible. Don’t use a fine mesh sieve for this as the sauce is already rather thick. Save the cherries and bread crumbs for the pheasant.
4. Stir the pepper and cinnamon into the sieved sauce.
5. Put the sauce back in the saucepan and heat it just until it’s steaming. Taste it and add more honey, pepper, or cinnamon if you’d like. Cook on low for about 5 minutes, or until it thickens up enough to leave a trail at the bottom of the pan when you run a spatula through it.
6. For the pheasant: Preheat the oven to 450°F (230°C).
7. Rub the salt all over the pheasant and sprinkle a little inside the cavity.
8. Divide the reserved cooked cherries up so that you have enough to stuff the pheasant with, and save the rest for serving. Stuff the cavity with the cherries, then truss the legs.
9. Brush the pheasant all over with the olive oil or clarified butter.
10. Chop the onion into eighths, then place them around the pheasant.
11. Sprinkle the pheasant with a little more salt and some pepper, if desired.
12. Roast the pheasant at 450°F (230°C) for 15 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 350°F (175°C) and cook for another 25 to 30 minutes, or until reaches an internal temperature of 155°F (70°C) at the thickest part of the breast. Take the pheasant out and let it rest for at least 10 minutes.
13. To serve: Plate the pheasant with the onions, the rest of the cooked cherries, and some fresh cherries if you have them along with the sour cherry sauce.

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